Last year was the hottest on record by an astonishing margin, a new report by the Climate Council has revealed. New global heat data released overnight revealed that 2015 shattered records, with the average temperature across the entire planet 0.90˚C above the 20th century average, almost 20% higher than the previous highest departure from average. The Climate Council’s Hottest Year on Record (Again) report, which analyses the data in an Australian context, also found 2015 was a horror year for extreme heat, bushfires and storms. The report also found: The average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas for 2015 was 0.90°C above the 20th century average of 13.9°C, beating the previous record warmth of 2014 by 0.16°C; The 2015 temperature marks the largest margin by which an annual temperature record has been broken. Prior to this year, the largest margin occurred in 1998, when the annual temperature surpassed the record set in 1997 by 0.12°C; At 1.11°C higher than the monthly average, December was the first time that a monthly temperature departure from average exceeded 1°C and the second widest margin by which an all-time monthly global temperature record has been broken; and Overall, global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.17°C per decade since 1970.