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The Met Office has released long-term figures indicating that 2016 is likely to repeat this year's record global temperatures. "2015 is on track to be the warmest year on record, and this forecast suggests 2016 is likely to be at least as warm, if not warmer," said Met Office research fellow Prof Chris Folland in a press statement.

Based on data for January to October, global temperatures for this year are currently 0.72 degrees C warmer than average global temperatures between 1961 and 1990 and 0.41 degrees C above the global average from 1981 to 2010.


Both this year's high temperatures and predicted highs for 2016 are attributed to a combination of factors, including the effect of unusually warm Pacific Ocean waters, El Niño and man-made global warming. If 2015 and 2016's temperatures occur as predicted, we will have seen three consecutive warmest years on record.

However, the Met Office doesn't anticipate global temperatures to continue climbing indefinitely, observing that "the current situation shows how global warming can combine with smaller, natural fluctuations to push our climate to levels of warmth which are unprecedented in the data records".

The Met Office calculates its global-average temperature records using tens of thousands of individual temperature recordings taken around the world on both land and sea -- and no, it does not mean your summer holidays in any particular place are guaranteed to see blanket sunshine.

The Met Office's figures are checked by computer to exclude obviously inaccurate readings before being averaged. The temperature data are then converted into "anomalies" -- the amount by which they differ from a long-term global average. Unlike a simple mean average of all global temperatures, the anomaly figures tend to remain consistent over large geographic areas.