Nasa expert: 'Long term weather trends attributable to climate change'

An environmental expert at Nasa has said the fact that the 10 warmest years on record have all been since 1998 could be down to climate change factors.

Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said: "While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases."

2014 was named at the hottest year on record today after records showed that average global temperatures across the year were 0.69C above 20th century averages.