Record temperatures 'shows global warming continues'

The announcement that 2014 was officially the hottest year since records began is a sign of continuing climate change, said one expert.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said the new temperature record "exposes the myth that global warming has stopped."

He said: "No politician can afford to ignore this overwhelming scientific evidence or claim that global warming is a hoax.

"Climate change is happening, and as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, national scientific academies and scientific organisations across the world have all concluded, human activities, particularly burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, are primarily responsible."