As revealed by NASA, the year 2020 has been the hottest year on record, tying with 2016 for the title.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York’s scientists found that the globally averaged temperature for 2020 was 1.02 degrees Celsius warmer than the baseline average between 1951-1980, and continues the long-term warming trend we’ve been observing on our planet.

Despite the temperatures recorded in 2020 were slightly higher than those of 2016, GISS placed both years at the top together, explaining it was within the margin of error of the analysis.

You can already pinpoint the exact two events that NASA believes were the most responsible for affecting global temperatures the most: the Australian wildfires at the beginning of 2020, that burned a staggering 46 million acres of land, resulting in the release of a massive amount of smoke and particles 18 miles high in the atmosphere, which shaded the Earth from sunlight, cooling the planet slightly, and the coronavirus pandemic, which came around later, causing global lockdowns which lowered air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, both contributing to a slightly cooler temperature as well.

Despite these two events, however, NASA notes that “warming is related to cumulative emissions” and so “the overall amount of avoided warming will be minimal.”

“The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend,” GISS director Gavin Schmidt said. “Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important — the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken.”