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This year was on track to be the hottest on record as temperatures were tipped to blow away the previously unprecedented highs of 2015.

Yet official data from the Met Office has revealed a 0.5C drop in global temperatures between spring and the end of October.

Scientists believe this is due to the onset of a global climate phenomenon named La Nina.

La Nina has replaced El Nino – a climate cycle linked with warmer oceans and therefore hotter conditions across the world.

El Nino, which started in 2015, was the primary reason global temperatures shot up – not carbon emissions from human activity, it is claimed.

One scienist has even urge humanity to give up fighting climate change claiming that keeping natural resources in the ground is futile.

However, the vast majority of scientists disagree with this theory and calls to give up the climate battle.

NASA climate boffin Dr Gavin Schmidt believes human driven climate change is the main cause of the warming.

Despite El Nino, 2015 still would have smashed temperature records, he said.

He said: “The reason why [2015 was] such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth.

“This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.”

(Image: NASA)

But Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, has a different view.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, she said: “I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.”

From 1998 global warming had been much slower until El Nino in 2015, she said.

She urged the scientific community to wait five years to determine what the main driver of global warming is.

NASA research also shows a 1C drop in temperatures since the summer.

(Image: GETTY)

When El Nino last happened in 1998, average temperatures spiked in a similar trend.

But despite this, 2016 is still set to be the hottest year since records began.

Dana Nuccitelli, environmental scientists, believes El Nino and man made emission are both responsible for the warming.

He said: “Human carbon pollution is heating the Earth incredibly fast.

“On top of that long-term human-caused global warming trend, there are fluctuations caused by various natural factors.

“One of these is the El Niño/La Niña cycle.”