Is the Anthropocene real? That is, the vigorously debated concept of a new geological epoch driven by humans.

Our environmental impact is indeed profound — there is little debate about that — but is it significant on a geological timescale, measured over millions of years?

And will humans leave a distinctive mark upon the layers of rocks that geologists of 100,000,000AD might use to investigate the present day?

Together with other members of the Anthropocene Working Group we've just published a study in Science that pulls much of the evidence together.

The case for the Anthropocene might be distilled into five strands:

1. Carbon in the atmosphere

Carbon is important, both due to its growing impact on global warming and because it leaves long-lived geological traces. The increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — now higher than at any time in at least the past few million years— can be found as fossil bubbles in the geologically short-lived "rock" that is polar ice.

But there are wider and more long-lived traces too, in the form of changed patterns of carbon isotopes (absorbed by every living thing) and in tiny, virtually indestructible particles of fly ash released from furnaces and chimneys. These are leaving an indelible signal in rock and soil strata now accumulating.

2. We're adding chemicals to the environment

Other chemical cycles have been even more greatly perturbed. There is now about twice as much reactive nitrogen at the Earth's surface than in the past, courtesy of the Haber-Bosch process used in the fertilizer industry, while the amount of phosphorus at the surface has also doubled.

This is changing the biology and chemistry of environments ranging from far northern lakes to the growing ocean "dead zones" found along polluted coasts.

The artificial radionuclides released by atom bomb explosions are (for now) environmentally trivial by comparison — but they have also left a distinct and measurable marker worldwide.

3. We've made new materials that may outlast us

Human ingenuity and industry are creating thousands of new materials that wouldn't exist without us, from compounds now harder than diamond to plastic, which has seen extraordinary growth from negligible pre-World War II to something like 300 million tons a year today.

Many of these materials take a long time to wear out, and they've been very widely disturbed across the planet. Almost nowhere is safe.

Even most mud samples taken from remote ocean beds now contain plastic fragments. Buried in sediment, these materials may be preserved over geological timescales, forming new rocks and rapidly-evolving "technofossils" for our descendants to marvel at.

4. Life itself is changing

The rate of extinctions is now many times above background levels, and is accelerating.

But arguably of yet greater significance, currently, to modern biology — and hence to future paleontology — is the unprecedented redistribution of plant and animal species between continents and across oceans.

This homogenization of life on Earth is being increasingly joined by human-directed evolution of living species in agriculture, to create entirely novel biological assemblages such as broccoli or maize, which don't exist in nature.

5. It all adds up

The changes are comparable in scale to those of earlier epochs. The extraordinarily wide range of geological signals associated with the Anthropocene — many of them new to the history of this planet — means comparison with earlier epochs is not straightforward.

But putting the evidence together indicates an overall magnitude of change at least as large as that which ushered in the Holocene, our current geological epoch, and most other epochs.

Hence, there is a solid basis for considering that the Anthropocene — especially if defined as beginning in the mid-20th century— is real within the context of our planet's history.

This doesn't necessarily mean the term will be formalized anytime soon. Other arguments come into play in the debate, and some widely-used geological time terms such as the Precambrian (the planet's first four billion years) still don't have an official definition.

But it does mean that humans are moving the Earth system from the comparative environmental stability of the Holocene into a new, evolving planetary state. And the impact will be felt by all human generations to come.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted

Henrik Fisker, one of the more complicated and controversial figures in the auto industry, was a picture of suave and calm the day before the reveal of his new Force 1 supercar. 

It's a far cry from the embattled Fisker I last saw at a party on a rainy night in Los Angeles in 2011, when his company, Fisker Automotive, was less than a year from bankruptcy.

He was a bit of grim cheerleader back then, trying to rally his troops and customers as Fisker Automotive struggled to live up to its early promise.

But at the Detroit Auto Show this year, he's back at his best.

"It feels great to be back," he said, surrounded by chassis of old Fisker Karmas that have had the hybrid-electric motors extracted and big 638-horsepower Corvette V8s dropped in, courtesy of what used to be called VL Automotive, but that will now be known as VLF Automotive.

'No mercy'

The V is for Gilbert Villarreal, a bespoke engineer who operates out of Motown. The L is for Bob Lutz, a former Marine aviator who was for decades, prior to his recent retirement, the definitive car guy, with stints at Chrysler and BMW before landing at GM as the company's product czar. The F, of course, is for Fisker.

VLF Automotive was tucked away on the floor of the Cobo Center, the sprawling downtown home of the Detroit Auto Show. Villarreal's VM Destinos are sharing the modest space with a car under a silvery sheet: the Force 1, which Fisker's former employer, Aston Martin, claims is a ripoff of his designs for the famed British marque.

Fisker was so baffled by the accusation that he field a lawsuit against Aston Martin, claiming extortion. He flicks through images of a car on his iPad, pointing out all the unique elements, almost as if he's sketching. Old designers never die, they just imagine new cars. 

Fisker, however, is under no illusions about what VLF is up against.

"In this industry, you have to have passion," he said. "It's tough, there's no mercy. But I just love cars — I love to bring a new car to market. And every time I do this, it gets a little easier."

Comeback kid

Frankly, I had expected to meet a far more scarred and haggard Fisker than I did. But the sleek Dane with a twinkle in his eye, bounce in his step, and brand new supercar to show off came off like a man with a fresh lease on life.

It helps that he occupies a unique place in the industry, one shared only by the likes of Elon Musk. A new car company is something more rare than a black swan. While we chatted, Fisker was assaulted by well-wishers and fans. He's the living embodiment of something that's nearly impossible to do in the merciless car business.

He makes an ideal partner for Lutz, a forthright executive who labored within the traditional industry but always came off as the only person who really knew what car lovers truly wanted.

In the case of VLF, that's something close to pure automotive pleasure, at the two critical levels of brash design and raw power. 

Fisker is clearly proud of the innovations he introduced with the Karma, a pricey plug-in hybrid that was Tesla's main competition when both carmakers hit the scene – the Karma, in fact, got there first.

But he's moved on.

The Force 1 is his new baby, an American supercar who's only real rival, given the anticipated $300,00o price tag, is Ford's GT, a $400,000 roadgoing version of a Le Mans race car.

"We wanted to make it extreme," he said. "There were no committees. We wanted to do what we love and do what we think is right."

Not that it's all old-school car guy brandishing. Fisker outlines a decent business case.

"If you want to spend over $200,000, it's hard to find an American car like this. You have to buy a foreign car. I just find it strange that there isn't competition for the Europeans. There is a niche for us."

All-American

"America is more extreme and flamboyant," he said.

That view explains why Fisker sees the Force 1 joining the ranks of the most American of American cars. He throws around words like "high power" and "high torque" speaks admiringly of "the size and volume" of the shapes that characterize the "fee spirit" of the best American machines.

This raises an obvious question: Has VLF built the last of the dinosaurs? 

Fisker doesn't think so. True, GM just rolled out a small all-electric car at CES in Las Vegas, the Bolt, and Tesla will bring a similar mass-market EV to the game in 2017, the Model 3. Gas may be less than $2 a gallon is parts of the US and SUV may be selling like crazy, but are we really ready to go back to mythical American cars of the cheap-gas-forever age?

"The optimism in the industry helps right now," Fisker said.

And then he tips his head, saying something that only a true car guy would say.

"You don't have to drive an annoying little car that you don't like."

Welcome back, Mr. Fisker.

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Scientists at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain are spearheading a project called "Cities at Night" to create a gallery of photos taken from the International Space Station. Here's what they found in the process.

Produced by Christine Nguyen. Original reporting by Julia Calderone.

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On the evening of Dec. 14, 2015, the mayor of Flint, Michigan declared a state of emergency.

The city wasn’t engulfed by flood waters or spun by a tornado. The emergency lay silently inside the bodies of its 30,000 children— only to be detected by a drop of blood on a simple test that, if positive, could mean they’d be permanently disabled.

Toxic lead has been creeping into Flint’s water supply for decades, but has reached epic proportions since the city started drawing its drinking water from the Flint River nearly two years ago.

A report released in September showed that lead levels in children under five had nearly doubled since the city made the switch. 

Flint began siphoning drinking water exclusively from the Flint River in April 2014 in an attempt to save money; it was meant to be an interim solution while the city transitioned from a costly 50-year-old system of routing water from Lake Huron via Detroit. In October 2015, Gov. Rick Snyder helped switch the city back to Lake Huron water in response to the independent report on lead levels, but the Flint River water had already damaged the pipes, causing them to become corroded.

Months later, they're still leaching lead into Flint's drinking water.

There are no safe levels of lead exposure, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In even minuscule proportions, lead can wreak havoc on a child’s nervous system, causing a host of behavioral issues and lower IQs. It can mangle the heart, kidneys, and reproductive organs, and cause anemia. To make matters worse, scientists believe such effects are irreversible.

Young children are especially prone to lead's pernicious effects. It can cause more damage to a child than an adult, and is more easily absorbed into their bodies. Women of childbearing age and those who are pregnant are also especially affected, according to the CDC, since the metal can sneak into reproductive systems and harm an unborn child.

Though the US has successfully eliminated lead from paint, car exhaust, water, and soil, it still shows up in millions of children across the country. The CDC found that between 1999 and 2004, 1.4% of children in the US had alarming levels of lead in their blood.

Flint residents have been complaining of rashes ever since the city switched to the new water supply nearly two years ago, claiming that the water looked strange and tasted bad, according to the New York Times. 

Still, officials didn't begin handing out bottled water to residents until five days after Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared the state of emergency, in December 2015. The city is currently beginning to address the water issues and provide more services, according to the New York Times, including water testing, filters, education, and health care.

At a press conference on Jan. 11, Gov. Snyder announced plans to seek federal aid in dealing with the crisis. As of that day, the water still wasn't safe to drink in Flint. 

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David Vaughan works on the Florida Reef Tract, the third largest coral reef in the world and a vastly important ecosystem for sustaining underwater life. He and a team of scientists are working to combat the crisis in the world’s coral reefs—that is, that human beings have lost 25 to 40 percent of the world’s corals in recent decades due largelyto seawater temperature rise and continued acidification of the ocean. Vaughan has developed a technique called “microfragmenting” that allows corals to grow more than 25 times faster than normal, which could rapidly restore the dwindling population of healthy coral reefs. The Atlantic went inside the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory in Summerland Key, Florida, where Vaughan is the executive director, to uncover how the process works and understand how much hope there is to reverse the damage caused by humans.

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Governor Rick Snyder late Tuesday activated the Michigan National Guard to help distribute bottled water and filters in Flint and asked the federal government for help dealing with a drinking water crisis that began months ago.

Snyder's executive order triggering the Guard's deployment is intended to bolster outreach to residents, whose tap water became contaminated with too much lead after the city switched its water supply in 2014 to save money while under state financial management.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) alleges that officials there knew about the risks of shifting the city’s water supply from Detroit's Lake Huron to the Flint River, but did so anyway — ostensibly to cut costs.

Local officials first declared a public health emergency in Flint in October in response to tests that showed children with elevated levels of lead.

Since then, authorities have struggled to ensure residents have safe drinking water. People in Flint have been told not to drink the water until it is determined to be safe, and volunteers and police in recent days have been going door to door with bottled water, filters and lead test kits.

Snyder on Tuesday also requested and was granted support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate a recovery plan with other federal agencies that have the programs, authorities or technical expertise to help. FEMA appointed a disaster recovery coordinator to help the state, spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

"As we work to ensure that all Flint residents have access to clean and safe drinking water, we are providing them with the direct assistance they need," the Republican governor said in a written statement.

Guard members are expected to begin arriving as early as Wednesday. More than 30 members will be in place by Friday, enabling American Red Cross volunteers to join door-to-door efforts instead of staffing sites where residents can pick up free bottled water, filters, replacement cartridges and home water testing kits.

Earlier Tuesday, Genesee County sheriff's Capt. Casey Tafoya said volunteers and police hoped to get to 500 to 600 houses a day in a city of about 99,000 residents with an estimated 30,000 households.

State troopers and sheriff's deputies escorted eight teams as they trudged through cold temperatures and 3 inches of snow, with more falling. Flyers were left at homes where no one answered, giving the location of where to pick up the items later.

"We plan to go every day this week, and we'll continue until everyone has safe drinking water," state police Lt. Dave Kaiser said.

For more than a year, water drawn from the Flint River leached lead from old lines into homes after the city switched its drinking water. Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children.

Flint has since returned to Detroit's system for its water, but officials remain concerned that damage to the pipes caused by the Flint River could allow them to continue leaching lead. They also want to ensure monitoring protocols are followed properly this time.

The state auditor general and a task force created by Snyder have faulted the Department of Environmental Quality for not requiring Flint to treat the river water for corrosion and belittling the public's fears. The agency's director — Dan Wyant — stepped down last month.

Nearly a month ago, the task force also raised concerns about a lack of organization in responding to the disaster.

Snyder, who has also faced criticism, said Monday that the water situation is a "crisis" and last week declared an emergency.

He said that since October, more than 12,000 filters have been distributed, more than 2,000 blood tests have been done — uncovering 43 cases of elevated lead levels — and more than 700 water tests have been conducted.

"I trust the good men and women of the National Guard will jumpstart the Snyder administration's lackluster response to this public health crisis," Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said in a statement. "Sadly, myself and many leaders of my community have advocated for this type of response for months."

The Detroit Free Press, who endorsed Snyder for Governor twice, posed a direct challenge to his administration's lackluster response in an editorial on Sunday: "When are you going to turn your relentless, positive action toward assuaging the misery your administration has heaped upon the people of Flint?" 

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It's been a staggering 81 days and counting since a natural gas well in a quiet, hilly town in northern Los Angeles began uncontrollably spewing hundreds of millions of pounds of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — into the sky.

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency there on January 6, 2016.

According to a recent air-based survey of the plume, scientists estimate that a whopping 160 million pounds of the gas have leaked from the well.

Activists and officials have deemed this one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recent years, and it's drawing comparisons to some of the most egregious man-made mishaps.

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich labeled this one of the worst environmental disasters since the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which for nearly three months leaked more than 3 million barrels of oil into the gulf. Even today, nearly five years later, oil still dots beaches along the Louisiana coast with tar, choking mangrove trees and sickening dolphins.

In a public hearing Jan. 9, 2016, L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich referred to the leak as a "mini Chernobyl,"according to the Los Angeles Times. 

That's right, Antonovich is comparing the leak to the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine, which spewed radioactive material into the sky — killing two plant workers during the release and 28 people in the next few weeks due to acute radiation poisoning. It's considered one of the "most serious accidents in nuclear history."

What's worse, workers are not even close to stopping the flow in Porter Ranch.

The leak sprung from a Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon on October 23, 2015. 

No one knows for sure how the leak happened, how much gas the well has lost, or how much more it will lose. But an aircraft flight through the gas plume on Janurary 7 hinted that the well has leaked at least 160 million pounds of methane since October.

To put that into perspective, that's equivalent to the annual emissions of about 382,000 passenger vehicles.

Again: The leak hasn't been stopped yet. It could take facility workers until the end of March — a staggering five months after the calamity began — to plug the well.

Residents claim the gas, which has drifted into surrounding neighborhoods, is sickening them with nausea, nosebleeds, and headaches. Thousands of people are displaced as a result.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exposure to the chemical mercaptan, which is added to the gas to give it that quintessential (and detectable) sulfurous smell, can cause staggered gait, vomiting, irritation of the respiratory system, wheezing, rapid heart beat, arm and leg rigidity, bluish discoloration of the skin, and irritated eyes and mucous membranes.

Industrial exposures could even put someone in a coma and cause death by a blocked lung artery up to 28 days later.

While the human side-effects from the gas are temporary, the atmospheric damage from the leak is lasting.

Much like a blanket, greenhouse gases advance global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. While methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, it is arguably worse for the environment. It doesn't stick around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it locks heat it into our atmosphere more efficiently.

Experts estimate that methane can warm the planet tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times better than carbon dioxide can.

Methane, mercaptan, and other gases pouring from the well are invisible to the naked eye. But an infrared camera, operated by an Earthworks ITC-certified thermographer, was able to reveal the enormous methane plume in action on December 17:

SoCalGas crews are drilling a relief well that they will pump with fluids and cement to intercept and plug the flow of gas from the leaking well. The relief well is expected to be completed by late March, 2016.

The company issued a press release Janurary 6, 2016 in response to Gov. Brown's declaration of a state of emergency that day.

"Our focus remains on quickly and safely stopping the leak and minimizing the impact to our neighbors in Porter Ranch,"SoCalGas' president and CEO Dennis Arriola said in the statement. "SoCalGas reaffirms our prior commitment to mitigate the environmental impact of the actual amount of natural gas released from the leak. We look forward to working with state officials to develop a framework that will achieve this goal."

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NOW WATCH: This massive Los Angeles county gas leak is spewing 110,000 pounds of methane an hour

Volcanic eruptions at the bottom of the sea are at the heart of how the Earth works, yet we know surprisingly little about them.

But now, thanks to a network of seafloor sensors connected to the internet, scientists are starting to get a glimpse of the fundamental processes that shape our planet.

This "ocean observatory" is situated atop an underwater mountain range off the coast from Oregon and Washington, and can measure everything from the rumbles of deep-sea earthquakes to the chemical burps of volcanic vents. And it just went online this month, The New York Times reported.

About 70% of the volcanism on Earth occurs underwater, yet it's traditionally been hard to study, said Deborah Kelley, the University of Washington scientist who directs the US part of the observatory (Canada directs the other part).

Now, for the first time, "we can see how a volcano lives and breathes and impacts our planet," Kelley told Business Insider, adding "It's basically the internet on the seafloor."

An observatory under the sea

The planet is crisscrossed by long underwater mountain ranges found at the boundary between tectonic plates, known as mid-ocean ridges. These zipperlike borders are formed when a rocky layer of the Earth's crust known as the mantle heats up and forms molten rock, or magma, which pushes the seafloor up.

Until recently, the only way scientists could study these mysterious volcanic regions was by taking sporadic expeditions by boat, where they could capture only a glimpse of what was going on.

"We’ve been studying these problems for decades, but on a cruise-by-cruise basis," Maya Tolstoy, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Business Insider. "This is first time we have this breadth of data streaming live from the seafloor."

The new observatory, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, provides an uninterrupted stream of data from the bottom of the ocean that is beamed to shore via a system of deep-sea cables and broadcast worldwide via the internet.

The observatory was the brainchild of University of Washington oceanographer John Delaney. It consists of two parts — Canada operates the northern part, and the US operates the southern one (funded by the National Science Foundation).

Forecasting an eruption

One of the exciting things scientists can do with this observatory is predict volcanic eruptions and monitor them while they're occurring. Earthquakes tell scientists about how the ground is deforming, which can provide clues that there's going to be an eruption, Tolstoy explained.

In fact, in April 2015, Tolstoy and some colleagues noticed a big uptick in the number of earthquakes at Axial seamount, an underwater volcano about 300 miles west of Oregon. They predicted that it would erupt very soon, and sure enough, it erupted two days later. 

Several months later, Kelley and her colleagues went on an expedition to the site. When they arrived and mapped the seafloor with their instruments, they found a new lava flow more than 400 feet thick, right where they expected it to be.

The ability to predict volcanic eruptions could be especially useful on land, where they pose a major risk to human life and property.

Still, while forecasting eruptions is exciting, its just one of the ways scientists can use the observatory to peer into this unexplored realm that we know so little about. 

And scientists aren't the only ones who are interested in learning about the deep sea. According to Kelley, several countries have plans to mine the seafloor for rare metals like gold and silver, and pharmaceutical companies are interested in tapping the secrets of the microbes that live in superheated vents and can withstand extreme temperatures. 

Life in the deep

Having better access to the deep ocean is also revealing some of the amazing biological communities that live there.

In the late 1970s, scientists discovered deep cracks in the Earth's surface near mid-ocean ridges out of which burbled water heated by the planet's core. We now know that these hydrothermal vents, as they're called, are home to rich ecosystems of microbes, bottom-feeding crabs and other unusual creatures.

This overturned a long-held belief that all living creatures had to get their energy from the sun, as these microbes get their energy from the heat and chemicals in the Earth's interior. This knowledge expands the range of environments where living things can survive, which increases the possibility that life exists in other parts of the universe.

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Few places on Earth are as unexplored as the deep sea.

The ocean floor is constantly in flux, sculpted by volcanic eruptions, altered by complex chemical processes, and colonized by rich biological communities.

For many years, the only way scientists could get a glimpse of these mysterious places was by going on occasional expeditions by ship and sending submersibles into the deep.

But not anymore.

The University of Washington, NSF-OOI, and Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility provided these images of the new observatory and the mysterious sights in these dark reaches of the ocean:

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Before the ocean observatory was built, scientists could only study the seafloor using robotic vehicles like this one. But these expeditions were sporadic, and could only capture brief glimpses of the ocean floor.

But recently, scientists installed a sophisticated network of sensors along an underwater mountain range in a region northwest of Oregon and Washington known as the Juan de Fuca Plate.  This "ocean observatory" is connected to shore by fiber optic cables, as shown below:

One of the sites covered by the observatory is a volcano called Axial Seamount, located about 300 miles west of Oregon. Thanks to earthquake sensors on the seafloor, scientists were able to forecast its eruption in April 2015.

For vegans, buying a high-end automobile can be tricky. The interior option of choice for most manufacturers is leather.

It's an issue that came up with Tesla last June, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — a Tesla shareholder — lobbied for nonanimal-based materials.

At the time, Tesla already offered a vegan-friendly interior — in the form of synthetic cloth seating, faux leather accents, and a non-leather steering wheel — but founder Elon Musk also said he'd look into the issue.

Now, PETA's brought the issue up again after The New York Times wrote about a synthetic-leather interior that Tesla is offering customers.

Here's what PETA released this morning: "TESLA LAUNCHES ALL-VEGAN CAR AFTER PETA APPEAL: CEO Elon Musk Makes Good on Promise to Explore Vegan Car Interiors, Now Offers Leather-Free Option for New SUV."

According to the PETA statement, Tesla developed a vegan-interior option after the organization urged the company to do so last June.

Naturally, some people are excited. They're passionate about the issue.

Tesla's response? Not quite

"The timing of this press release is a mystery to us," the company said in an email. "We have always offered our customers non-leather options for their Teslas."

When we called PETA, they offered some clarification. PETA's senior corporate liaison, Anne Brainard, told Business Insider that the organization is applauding Tesla for offering its first faux-leather option.

According to Brainard, the synthetic cloth interior was available only as a lower-level interior option, and thus precluded vegan Tesla buyers from opting for the higher-end interior treatments. The faux leather changes that.

The vegan interior option is something the premium automaker and the automotive industry as a whole are coming to grips with. While some automakers are staying firm in their leather-only approach to interior treatments, others such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Acura are making strides toward animal-free interiors.

So there you have it. Tesla had vegan interiors long before PETA demanded them, but the new faux-leather interior allows vegan Tesla buyers to upgrade to higher-end interior treatments.

Here's PETA's statement in its entirety:

Palo Alto, Calif. — When PETA, a Tesla Motors shareholder, spoke at Tesla's 2015 annual meeting to urge the company to offer only vegan leather for its car interiors, CEO Elon Musk said he would "absolutely" consider it. Since then, PETA has been working with Tesla, and this month, the electric-car leader launched Model X—its highly anticipated SUV—which is available with a fully vegan interior, including seats, steering wheel, and gear shift.

"By offering a 100 percent leather-free car, Tesla is pushing its eco-friendly business even further into the future," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "PETA can now point to Tesla as a source for top-quality vehicles whose cruelty-free seats are as kind to the environment as its engines are."

In its discussions with the company, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to abuse in any way"—pointed out that Tesla could reduce its carbon footprint by using only vegan leather. Turning animal skins into leather requires 130 different chemicals, including cyanide, and people who work in and live near tanneries suffer from exposure to these toxic chemicals. Leather production also squanders valuable natural resources, including up to 15,000 gallons of water per ton of hides, and produces massive amounts of the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. And, of course, cows killed for leather endure branding, tail-docking, dehorning, and castration—all without painkillers.

SEE ALSO: Tesla wants to take self-driving cars to a whole new level

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Paris - Human-driven climate change may have put the next ice age off by about 50,000 years, said scientists Thursday, highlighting our species' ever-more dominant influence on Earth's natural cycles.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere could override other influences to make this the longest inter-ice age period in Earth history, they wrote in the journal Nature.

Without human influence, the next ice age was probably about 50,000 years away anyway, wrote the team led by Andrey Ganopolski of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. 

But current trends of CO2 emissions from humans burning oil, coal and gas, "are already sufficient to postpone the next ice age for another 50,000 years," he said.

"The bottom line is that we are basically skipping a whole glacial cycle, which is unprecedented." 

Ice ages are caused partly by changes in Sun exposure caused by natural variations in the Earth's orbit, combined with the influence of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Temperate "interglacial" periods normally last about 20,000 to 30,000 years, according to scientists. Once every 400,000 years or so, an inter-ice age period will last longer than that.

The last ice age ended between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, giving rise to the Holocene, Earth's current geological period, which has been an unusually mild inter-ice age era.

'Mind-boggling'

The most recent part of the Holocene, following the Industrial Revolution, has become known as the Anthropocene -- the period when human activities started influencing Earth's geological processes.

"It is mind-boggling that humankind is able to interfere with a mechanism that shaped the world as we know it," Ganopolski said in a statement.

His team used computer modelling to simulate conditions in the atmosphere, ocean, ice sheets and global carbon cycle simultaneously.

The results matched the timing of the last eight ice ages, and were then used to forecast future ones.

To date, humans have added about 500 billion tonnes (gigatonnes or Gt) of carbon (C) to the atmosphere via carbon dioxide emissions. 

The UN's climate science panel has said the total must be limited to 1,000 Gt C if global warming is to be held in check at a relatively safe two degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

"In the 1,000 Gt C scenario, the probability of glacial inception during the next 100,000 years is notably reduced," the team wrote.

Human interference with the climate meant the current interglacial period could be the longest yet, the team said.

Humans shaping the future 

"Like no other force on the planet, ice ages have shaped the global environment and thereby determined the development of human civilisation," said PIK director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.

"For instance, we owe our fertile soil to the last ice age that also carved out today's landscapes, leaving glaciers and rivers behind, forming fjords, moraines and lakes.

"However, today it is humankind with its emissions from burning fossil fuels that determines the future development of the planet."

Commentators pointed out that while ice ages are by no means pleasant periods for life on Earth, the potential benefits of a delay were far outweighed by the short-term harms from global warming.

"The suppression of an ice age is not as directly significant as the enhanced warming of what would otherwise have been a gently cooling planet," said Chris Rapley of University College London. 

SEE ALSO: 15 ways the world will be terrifying in 2050

CHECK OUT: Giant, ancient viruses are thawing out in Siberia — and they're changing everything we thought we knew about them

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NOW WATCH: The weather forecast for 2016 is terrifying

A low pressure system strengthened rapidly from a tropical storm on Wednesday to become Hurricane Alex on Thursday.

And the new Atlantic hurricane is the first one to form this early (in January) since 1938, NASA says, citing the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Alex's maximum sustained winds are close to 85 mph, with higher gusts possible. According to The Atlantic, the storm could bring flash floods and mudslides, as well as large, dangerous waves near the coast.

A hurricane warning has been issued for several islands off of Portugal including Faial, Pico, Sao Jorge, Graciosa, and Terceira in the central Azores, and a tropical storm warning is in effect for the islands of Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the eastern Azores.

The view from satellites

The earliest view of the storm from NASA satellites measured the strongest sustained winds at close to 60.4 mph northwest of the storm's center. Within eight hours, the strongest winds reached 67.1 mph and shifted east of the storm's center. Those winds are what later developed into tropical storm Alex.

By 10 a.m. EST on Thursday, Alex had hurricane-force winds reaching 25 miles out from its center, with tropical storm-force winds reaching up to 150 miles out. This animation shows Alex as it was beginning to form:

An unusually early hurricane

Alex is not just the first Atlantic hurricane to form in January, it's also the first North Atlantic hurricane to thrive in January since Hurricane Alice in 1955, which formed on Dec. 30, 1954, said NASA.

According to the NHC, the Atlantic hurricane season typically runs from June 1 to November 30, and the first named storm normally appears in July.

NHC forecaster Richard Pasch told NASA that it's very unusual for a hurricane to form over water that's 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), but the lowest layer of the atmosphere is currently estimated to be about -60 C (-76 F), which is a lot colder than the tropical average. The instability this creates is likely what caused Alex to form and intensify so early, Pasch said.

As of 10 a.m. Thursday, Alex was located south of the Azores at latitude 31.5 North, longitude 28.4 West and moving north-northeast at around 20 mph. If the storm follows the current forecast track, its center will move near or over parts of the Azores Friday morning, NASA said.

After that, it's expected to head toward Greenland.

NEXT UP: A very strange hurricane just popped up in the Pacific

NOW SEE: 15 of the deadliest hurricanes in US history

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NOW WATCH: The weather forecast for 2016 is terrifying

Nearly two years ago, in April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan made a mistake.

In an attempt to save money — about $12 million per year — they began siphoning drinking water from the Flint River instead of their original yet costly source, Lake Huron via Detroit.

To save even further — approximately $100 per day, as Trevor Noah reported on The Daily Show— they neglected to treat the river water with chemicals that would prevent the pipes from corroding.

As a result, the water irreversibly damaged the insides of the city's pipes, causing toxic levels of lead and other contaminants to leach into the water supply, sickening its 100,000 residents and potentially permanently mangling the minds and bodies of its 30,000 children.

On the evening of Dec. 14, 2015, the mayor of Flint, Michigan declared a state of emergency — responding not only a health crisis, but to a problem that could cost the city $1.5 billion to fix.

In an effort to save $12 million per year, Flint has created a $1.5 billion problem that could've been averted for approximately $36,000 per year, a comparatively paltry amount.

"The saddest thing about this ... is how little it would've cost to prevent it all," Noah said during the show.

Now, the damage is done. In October 2015, Gov. Rick Snyder helped switch the city back to Lake Huron water in response to the health crisis, but months later, the corroded pipes are still leaching lead into Flint's drinking water. 

Toxic lead has been creeping into Flint’s water supply for decades, but has reached epic proportions since the city started drawing its drinking water from the Flint River nearly two years ago.

A report released in September showed that lead levels in children under five had nearly doubled since the city made the switch. 

There are no safe levels of lead exposure, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In even minuscule proportions, lead can wreak havoc on a child’s nervous system, causing a host of behavioral issues and lower IQs. It can injure the heart, kidneys, and reproductive organs, and cause anemia. To make matters worse, scientists believe such effects are irreversible.

Young children are especially prone to lead's pernicious effects. It can cause more damage to a child than an adult, and is more easily absorbed into their bodies. Women of childbearing age and those who are pregnant are also especially affected, according to the CDC, since the metal can sneak into reproductive systems and harm an unborn child.

Though the US has successfully eliminated lead from paint, car exhaust, water, and soil, it still shows up in millions of children across the country. The CDC found that between 1999 and 2004, 1.4% of children in the US had alarming levels of lead in their blood.

Flint residents have been complaining of rashes ever since the city switched to the new water supply nearly two years ago, claiming that the water looked strange and tasted bad, according to the New York Times. 

Still, officials didn't begin handing out bottled water to residents until five days after Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared the state of emergency, in December 2015. The city is currently beginning to address the water issues and provide more services, according to the New York Times, including water testing, filters, education, and health care.

At a press conference on Jan. 11, Gov. Snyder announced plans to seek federal aid in dealing with the crisis. As of that day, the water still wasn't safe to drink in Flint. 

You can watch Noah's full take below.

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NOW WATCH: This massive Los Angeles county gas leak is spewing 110,000 pounds of methane an hour

In a feat of photographic excellence, amateur and professional drone nerds have proven a point they've been trying to make for years: drones can shoot.

Photographs, that is; and stunning ones at that.

Dronestagram— the first social network dedicated solely to drone snaps — announced winners of its second annual aerial photography contest earlier this month.

A panel of experts, including Ken Geiger, a National Geographic photographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, and Jean-Pierre Vrignaud, editor in chief of National Geographic France and Dronestagram, selected nine of the best photographs from more than 5,000 entries.

We refer to the photographers here by their Dronestagram handles, not their full names.

The winning images are breathtaking. Check them out:

Photographer Ricardo Matiello took this incredible snap high above the clouds in Maringá, Paraná, Brazil on a rare, foggy day by flying his drone as high as he could before it disappeared into the fog.

"Above the Mist" won two awards: first place in the category, Places and first place in the category, Popular Prizes (most liked picture). Check out Ricardo Matiello's Dronestagram profile here.

Kdilliard took this image moments after the start of the annual La Jolla Pier-To-Cove Swim in San Diego at 9 a.m. on June 20, 2015. The photographer’s fiance competed in the 1 ½ mile swim during low tide in the comfortable 70-degree water.

"La Jolla" won second place in the category, Nature. Check out Kdilliard's Dronestagram profile here.

Dronestagram user Tahitiflyshoot captured the sparkling waters near Mo'orea island in French Polynesia at the moment a group of sharks happened to swim by.

"Snorkeling with sharks" won first place in the category, Nature. Check out Tahitiflyshoot's Dronestagram profile here.

American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter.

The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once grew throughout the Appalachian mountains. They provided habitat and a mast crop for wildlife, a nutritious nut crop for humans and a source of valuable timber. Because of their rapid growth rate and rot-resistant wood, they also have significant potential for carbon sequestration, important in these days of climate change.

The species has a sad story to tell. Of the estimated four billion American chestnut trees that once grew from Maine to Georgia, only a remnant survive today.

The species was nearly wiped out by chestnut blight, a devastating disease caused by the exotic fungal pathogen Cryphonectria parasitica. This fungus was accidentally introduced into the United States over a century ago as people began to import Asian species of chestnut. It reduced the American chestnut from the dominant canopy species in the eastern forests to little more than a rare shrub.

After battling the blight for more than a century, researchers are using the modern tools of breeding, bio-control methods that rely on a virus that inhibits the growth of the infecting fungus, and direct genetic modification to return the American chestnut to its keystone position in our forests.

To restore this beloved tree, we will need every tool available. It’s taken 26 years of research involving a team of more than 100 university scientists and students here at the not-for-profit American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project, but we’ve finally developed a nonpatented, blight-resistant American chestnut tree.

One genetic tweak

My research partner, Dr. Chuck Maynard, and I work with a team at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) that includes high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, colleagues from other institutions and volunteers. Our efforts focus on direct genetic modification, or genetic engineering, as a way to bring back the American chestnut.

We’ve tested more than 30 genes from different plant species that could potentially enhance blight resistance. To date, a gene from bread wheat has proven most effective at protecting the tree from the fungus-caused blight.

This wheat gene produces an enzyme called oxalate oxidase (OxO), which detoxifies the oxalate that the fungus uses to form deadly cankers on the stems. This common defense enzyme is found in all grain crops as well as in bananas, strawberries, peanuts and other familiar foods consumed daily by billions of humans and animals, and it’s unrelated to gluten proteins.

We’ve added the OxO gene (and a marker gene to help us ensure the resistance-enhancing gene is present) to the chestnut genome, which contains around 40,000 other genes. This is a minuscule alteration compared to the products of many traditional breeding methods. Consider the techniques of species hybridization, in which tens of thousands of genes are added, and mutational breeding, in which unknown mutations are induced. Genetic engineering allows us to produce a blight-resistant American chestnut that’s genetically over 99.999 percent identical to wild-type American chestnuts.

Gene transfers happen all the time

For some, this raises a question: isn’t moving genes between species unnatural? In short: no. Such movement has been essential to the evolution of all species. Researchers are discovering that horizontal (between-species) gene transfer happens in nature and even in our own bodies. In fact, the same organism (Agrobacterium) that we use to move blight-resistance genes into chestnuts has also permanently modified other plants in the wild. For example, all the sweet potato varieties on the market today were genetically engineered by this bacterium around 8,000 years ago.

There is another logical question: what about unintended consequences? Of course undefined questions are impossible to answer, but logically the method producing the smallest changes to the plant should have the fewest unintended consequences. We have not observed nontarget transgene effects – that is, changes that we didn’t intend – on our trees or on other organisms that interact with our trees, for example with beneficial fungi.

And at any rate, unintended consequences aren’t constrained to the genetics lab. Chestnut growers have seen unintended consequences resulting from their hybrid breeding of chestnuts. One example is the internal kernel breakdown (IKB) seen in chestnut hybridization, caused by crossing a male sterile European/Japanese hybrid (“Colossal”) with Chinese chestnut. By mixing tens of thousands of genes with unknown interactions through traditional breeding, occasionally you get incompatible combinations or induced mutations that can lead to unintended outcomes like IKB or male sterility.

One of the key advantages of genetic engineering is that it’s far less disruptive to the original chestnut genome – and thus to its ecologically important characteristics. The trees remain more true to form with less chance of unforeseen and unwanted side effects. Once these genes are inserted, they become a normal part of the tree’s genome and are inherited just like any other gene. They have no more chance of moving to other species than do any of the approximately 40,000 genes already in chestnut.

Next steps for the blight-resistant American chestnut

One of the challenges of genetic engineering that is not faced by any other methods of genetic modification also serves as a safeguard.

We must shepherd these trees through federal regulatory review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.

Our plan is to submit these applications as we finish collecting the necessary data; we expect the process to take three to five years. Once we receive (anticipated) approval, we will quickly make the trees available to the public.

This project is unique because it is the first to seek approval of a transgenic plant to help save a species and restore a forest’s ecology. Our forests face many challenges today from exotic pests and pathogens such as Emerald Ash Borer, Helmlock Wooly Adelgid, Sudden Oak Death, Dutch Elm Disease, and many more. The American chestnut can serve as a model system for protecting our forest’s health.

Direct genetic modification will likely not be used in isolation. Integration might improve the outcomes of both the conventional hybrid/backcross breeding program of the American Chestnut Foundation and our genetic engineering program. Allowing crosses between the best trees from both programs will allow gene stacking – having multiple and diverse resistance genes in a single tree – with each working in a different way to stop the blight. This would significantly decrease the chances that the blight could ever overcome the resistance. The two programs working together would also allow the addition of resistance genes for other important pests, such as Phytophthora, which causes a serious root rot in the southern part of the chestnut range. And combining methods increases the chances that the resistance will be long-lasting and reliable, which is very important for a tree that in good health can live for centuries.

A unique aspect of the genetically engineered American chestnut trees is their ability to rescue the genetic diversity in the small surviving population of American chestnut trees. When we cross our blight-resistant transgenic trees to these surviving “mother” trees, directly in the wild or from nuts gathered from them and grown in orchards, we’re helping preserve the remaining wild genes.

Half the resulting offspring will be fully blight-resistant, while also containing half the genes from the mother tree. By making these crosses, the restoration trees will be ecologically adapted to the diverse environments in which they’ll grow. These trees could also be used to boost the genetic diversity of the hybrid/backcross breeding program, or used directly for restoration and left to fend for themselves, allowing natural selection to make the final determination of the effectiveness of our efforts.

The American chestnut was one of the most important hardwood tree species in the eastern forests of North America, and it can be again. This tiny change in the genome will hopefully be a huge step toward putting the American chestnut on a path to recovery.

William Powell, Professor in the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

SEE ALSO: These 7 everyday items wouldn’t exist as we know them without GMOs

CHECK OUT: The FDA finally approved ‘Frankenfish’ — the first genetically modified animal you can eat

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NOW WATCH: Study reveals the Earth is on track to run out of trees in 300 years

Scientists create and discover new materials all the time. But few are so jaw-droppingly cool that they deserve to be recognized.

From mindbendingly lightweight solids used by NASA to metals that melt in your hand, here are a few of the neatest chemicals around, sourced from this Quora thread.

Aerogel: The lightest solid known to man

This remarkable gel is the world's lightest solid.

Since its invention in 1931 by American scientist Samuel Kistler, it has been used in space missions to collect dust from a comet's tail, by government agencies for developing insulated tents, and even for manufacturing clothing that protects a person from extreme heat.

NASA has nicknamed it "Blue Smoke" because it kind of looks like a hologram.

What makes this substance so cool lies in its seemingly paradoxical properties, Quora user Abhinash Tummala writes. This hard gel is mostly air and therefore extremely lightweight, not unlike a sponge. But it is also very good at repelling heat. As you can see in the image below, it can protect a flower from a strong flame.

The individual molecules that make up aerogel can also act like mini baseball gloves — they can capture fast-moving particles without damaging them. This was really useful during NASA's Stardust mission.

Scientists fashioned silica-based aerogel onto a massive tennis-racket-shaped collector that sat outside its Stardust spacecraft. Its purpose was to capture fragile particle fragments trailing behind the Comet Wild 2 without damaging them. Because aerogel is strong and relatively transparent, scientists were then able to easily find and extract the particles later for analysis.

Aerogel's precursor is structurally similar to Jell-O. The gelatin powder in Jell-O forms a flexible, liquid solution when mixed with warm water, which then cools into a stiff, tangled network that chemically looks like an unruly ball of yarn and sets into a shape. But, if you heated the set Jell-O, it would dry out and you'd be left with a lump of Jell-O powder once again.

Aerogel, on the other hand, isn't made of gelatin but is made from one of a variety of substances, depending upon its desired use. Most commonly it is manufactured from silica, the most abundant mineral in Earth's crust. Unlike the process of making Jell-O, wet aerogel is put through a cycle of pressurized cooling and heating, which makes it retain its shape after drying out.

The resulting aerogel is mostly air, making it still a solid but extremely lightweight. It is often described as feeling like Styrofoam or that flaky, green foam that fake plants are potted in.

You can make your own aerogel by following one of these recipes.

Gallium: The metal that melts at room temperature

As Quora user Xu Beixi writes, this soft, shimmering solid metal is quite unusual. At low temperatures, it exists as a brittle, hard structure. But when warmed to just above room temperature, it melts into a shiny puddle.

By far its main use has been in the manufacture of smartphones and aerospace and telecommunications industries.

While this chemical element exists in the periodic table, it doesn't occur in nature all that much. Trace amounts can be found in zinc ores and bauxite, which is the main source of aluminum. It does, however, exist on Amazon, where you can buy it for only $10.

If you splurge on some, make sure to keep it away from your iPhone — as it degrades other metals.

This is especially true if the aluminum backing on your phone is scratched, which allows the gallium to penetrate more deeply into the metal lattice. This YouTube video by TechRax demonstrates what happens if you pour melted gallium onto the scratched aluminum backing of an iPhone:

A few hours later, the back of the iPhone had completely decomposed:

Diamond Nanothreads: Possible basis for a space elevator?

This new manmade fiber composed of carbon atoms arranged into a zigzagging structure reminiscent of that of a diamond's may be the strongest, stiffest nanomaterial ever made.

Discovered in 2014, its strength appears to surpass that of carbon nanotubes, which is another ultra-strong and lightweight material.

Shockingly, it is also extremely thin. It measures only three atoms across and is much thinner than a strand of hair.

Since this structure was discovered only recently, its composition must be confirmed with higher resolution images.

Its properties and behavior also need to be understood more deeply before it can be scaled up for use commercially.

But if everything checks out, it's possible that diamond nanothreads could theoretically be strong yet light enough to build an elevator to space. Other candidates, such as steel, would eventually break under their own weight if stretched long enough.

Ferrofluid: This magnetic liquid forms incredible shapes

This porcupine-like suspension of super-fine magnetic particles — usually iron — is a liquid that begins to dance and form mind-boggling structures after a magnetic field is applied to it, Quora user Richard Tabassi notes.

Each individual tiny particle in ferrofluid is coated with a surfactant, a chemical that prevents the particles from glomming together, and is suspended in a liquid — water for instance. The particles aren't like the magnets that you stick on your refrigerator. They're what scientists call "paramagnetic," meaning that when they're near a magnetic field, they turn into tiny magnets that move around and stick to other tiny magnets suspended in the field.

Ferrofluid was created in 1963 by NASA scientist Steve Pappell as a prototype for rocket fuel that would propel a spacecraft after a magnetic field was applied to it. The weird thing about ferrofluids is that they behave like both a liquid and a solid at the same time.

This video by YouTuber Ferrofluidvideos shows the stunning shapes and movements that ferrofluid can make when under the influence of magnetism.

You can watch the full video here:

Check out the full Quora thread for more awesome things.

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NOW WATCH: We asked Siri the most existential question ever and she had a lot to say

A monster of a snowstorm could clobber the Northeast this weekend, if the weather models pan out.

According to Slate, nearly every model predicts that a storm could dump between 1 foot and 2 feet of snow everywhere between northern Virginia and Boston.

The National Weather Service in the Baltimore-Washington area says that it could bring"significant travel delays, closures, and threats to life and property," and heavy snow is expected in other parts of the East Coast.

On Twitter, one meteorologist called it a "blizzard for the ages":

As Slate's Eric Holthaus writes: "What's amazing — perhaps even more so than the impressive potential snow totals — is that all the major weather models are already locked in so far in advance."

Now, we're still three to four days away from when the blizzard is supposed to hit, so a lot could change in that time.

This could signal the end of the unusually mild winter the Northeast has been having, which is only partially linked to this year's record-strength El Niño — a global weather pattern linked to warmer-than-usual water temperatures in the Pacific.

Here's a pretty animation of one of the forecasts:

Paul Kocin, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a forecast discussion on Tuesday that the conditions for this week's snowstorm are "textbook," saying that there was potential for a "significant" East Coast snowstorm Friday through Sunday.

He noted that while there is good agreement in the weather models, there are small but crucial differences. All models suggest the storm will continue building as it moves toward the Mid-Atlantic Coast, become more vertical and move northeastward.

The storm will likely slow down as it moves off the Mid-Atlantic Coast, but then it could either speed up again as it heads northeast, or several weather fronts could intersect farther north and east, Kocin wrote. In both scenarios, "the overall speed of the system is important to affect the amount of snow in any one area," he said.

Kocin compared the blizzard to one in February 2010 — aka "Snowmageddon"— one in January 1996, and the President's Day storm of 2003.

But as good as the forecasts are, they're still just predictions, and they've been wrong in the past. Take the "historic blizzard" that was forecast to hit New York City in January 2015, which was predicted to dump as much as 2 feet of snow on the city but only brought about 5.5 inches.

So don't panic yet, but it might be time to get the snow shovels ready!

SEE ALSO: A strange hurricane is forming, and it's doing something no other storm has in over 75 years

DON'T MISS: 11 photos that show how incredibly bizarre the weather in the US has been this month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A historic blizzard may slam the Northeast this weekend

It wasn't your imagination: 2015 was a record-shattering hot year.

Last year’s global average temperature was the hottest ever by the widest margin on record, two US government agencies said on Wednesday.

The announcement adds to pressure for deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts that scientists say are necessary to stop the warming that is disrupting the global climate.

Data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that in 2015, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 Celsius) above the 20th century average, surpassing 2014’s previous record by 0.29 F (0.16 C).

Here's a graph showing the departure from the averages:

This was the fourth time a global temperature record has been set this century, the agencies said in a summary of their annual report.

“2015 was remarkable even in the context of the larger, long-term warming trend,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The sharp increase in 2015 was driven in part by El Niño, a natural weather cycle in the Pacific that warms the ocean surface every two to seven years. But scientists say human activities — notably burning fossil fuels — were the main driver behind the rise.

"We would not have seen the record warming without the long-term trend,” Schmidt said.

The latest El Niño started in late 2015 and will last until spring 2016. It is among the strongest ever recorded but Schmidt and others say the weather phenomenon played just a supporting role in the earth's temperature rise.

The 2015 data underscores the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to hold temperature increases to well below 2 degrees C, the target agreed to by more than 190 countries at climate talks in Paris last December.

(Reuters reporting By Valerie Volcovici)

RELATED: 2015 was one of the craziest years yet for weather — here’s why that’s so dangerous

NEXT: 11 photos that show how incredibly bizarre the weather in the US was in December

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NOW WATCH: The weather forecast for 2016 is terrifying

The science team at Tech Insider is looking for paid editorial interns to join our ranks.

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Tech Insider interns are a vital part of our team and do meaningful work: researching, writing, pitching, and producing posts. They also help us tackle breaking news and get to cover events if the opportunity is right.

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Our aim is to help readers appreciate, understand, and use science and innovations that surround us — be they in everyday life, a cryptic study, or trending news.

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Consider applying if:

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• You're interminably wowed by human ingenuity and obsessed with the future.

After-hours duties may also include helping retain our Science Friday trivia champion title over rival publications.

Apply here with a one-page resume, three relevant clips, and a one-page cover letter telling us what excites you about working for Tech Insider.

We hire interns on a rolling basis.

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NOW WATCH: Here's Exactly What A Hiring Manager Scans For When Reviewing Resumes

Weather forecasts suggest that serious snowstorm is bearing down on the Northeast this weekend, which is predicted to dump between one and two feet of snow along the coast from Virginia to Boston.

But that's not the worst part.

As Slate reports, the blizzard could also bring massive waves and flooding to New York and New Jersey, the likes of which haven't been seen since Hurricane Sandy. 

Slate's Eric Holthaus tweeted this image of the flooding forecast:

Before Sandy, the last time the region saw flooding like that was during a December 1992 Nor'easter, which brought high tides and waves up to 25 feet near the Jersey Shore. Like that storm, the one this weekend will arrive during a full moon, when the tides are highest. In addition, the storm is expected to hover just offshore, increasing the risk of flooding along the coast from eastern Maryland to Long Island, Slate notes.

And that's just in New York. Mashable reports that in Washington DC, it could be the biggest snowstorm in 100 years, possibly bringing up to two-and-a-half feet of snow.

Here's Holthaus again with the most likely and worst case snowfall for DC:

 The National Weather Service in the Baltimore-Washington area said it could bring"significant travel delays, closures, and threats to life and property."

The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang tweeted this image of the predicted snowfall in DC:

Another meteorologist called it a "blizzard for the ages":

As Slate's Eric Holthaus wrote earlier this week, "What's amazing — perhaps even more so than the impressive potential snow totals — is that all the major weather models are already locked in so far in advance."

Now, we're still several days away from when the blizzard is supposed to hit, so a lot could change in that time. Current models predict the brunt of the storm touching down on Friday evening and lasting through Saturday evening.

This could signal the end of the unusually mild winter the Northeast has been having, which is only partially linked to this year's record-strength El Niño — a global weather pattern linked to warmer-than-usual water temperatures in the Pacific.

Here's a pretty animation of one of the forecasts:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Paul Kocin said in a forecast discussion on Tuesday that the conditions for this week's snowstorm are "textbook," saying that there was potential for a "significant" East Coast snowstorm Friday through Sunday.

Kocin noted that while there is good agreement in the weather models, there are small but crucial differences. All models suggest the storm will continue building as it moves toward the Mid-Atlantic Coast, become more vertical and move northeastward.

The storm will likely slow down as it moves off the Mid-Atlantic Coast, but then it could either speed up again as it heads northeast, or several weather fronts could intersect farther north and east, Kocin wrote. In both scenarios, "the overall speed of the system is important to affect the amount of snow in any one area," he said.

Kocin compared the blizzard to one in February 2010 — aka "Snowmageddon"— one in January 1996, and the President's Day storm of 2003.

But as good as the forecasts are, they're still just predictions, and they've been wrong in the past. Take the "historic blizzard" that was forecast to hit New York City in January 2015, which was predicted to dump as much as 2 feet of snow on the city but only brought about 5.5 inches.

So don't panic yet, but it might be time to get the snow shovels ready!

SEE ALSO: A strange hurricane is forming, and it's doing something no other storm has in over 75 years

DON'T MISS: 11 photos that show how incredibly bizarre the weather in the US has been this month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The weather forecast for 2016 is terrifying