Extreme Events

According to NOAA’s Regional Snowfall Index, the January 22–24, 2016, snowstorm ranked as a Category 5 —“crippling”—event for both the Northeast and Southeast.

Global surface temperature was record warm in 2015, moving ahead of the record set just last year by 0.29°F—the largest margin by which one year has ever beaten another since official records began in 1880.

Thanks to an unusually cold winter in the Antarctic stratosphere, the 2015 ozone hole was larger than it has been in recent years.