Climate researchers from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded and that 2016 is set to be even hotter. Temperatures in 2015 broke all previous records made in 2014, a report added, and by the largest margins ever. If temperatures in 2016 set new records, it will be the first time ever that temperature records are broken three years in a row.

The NOAA report said the average temperature across land and water surfaces was around 0.9 Celsius above the 20th century average. In 2014, global temperatures were 0.13 Celsius warmer, leaving a huge margin between 2014 and 2015 temperatures. United State space agency NASA monitors climate using satellites and weather stations, and said that the temperature change is largely due to higher levels of carbon dioxide and other man-made emissions in the atmosphere.

The report added that since 1997, which at the time was the hottest year on record, 16 of the following 18 years have each been warmer than that year. New heat records would have been set in 2015, even without the effects of El Nino, which led to warmer waters in the equatorial Pacific region. El Nino “pushed it [records] way over the top”, director of NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Tom Karl said. Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, said the trend will only continue.