July
2016 was world's hottest month since records began, says Nasa
Nasa’s results, which
combine sea-surface temperature and air temperature on land, show
July was 10th month in a row to break monthly temperature record
Michael Slezak
Tuesday 16 August 2016 02.01
BST
Last month was the hottest
month in recorded history, beating the record set just 12 months
before and continuing the long string of monthly records, according
to the latest Nasa data.
The past nine months have set
temperature records for their respective months and the trend
continued this month to make 10 in a row, according to Nasa. July
broke the absolute record for hottest month since records began in
1880.
Similar data from the US
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said the
past 14 months have broken the temperature record for each month, but
it hasn’t released its figures for July yet.
The new results were published
on the Nasa database and tweeted by climatologist Gavin Schmidt,
director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Nasa’s results, which
combine sea surface temperature and air temperature on land, showed
July 2016 was 0.84C hotter than the 1951 to 1980 average for July,
and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015.
As the string of hottest
months continues, 2016 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest
year on record, said David Karoly, a climate scientist from the
University of Melbourne.
That string was caused by a
combination of global warming and El Niño, which spreads warm water
across the Pacific, giving a boost to global temperatures.
Karoly pointed out that Nasa’s
baseline temperatures, which new measurements are compared against,
already included about 0.5C of warming in global temperatures. That
meant July was about 1.3C warmer than the pre-industrial average.
Karoly said about 0.2C of that
anomaly was likely due to the El Niño, leaving about 1.1C mostly due
to human-induced climate change.
The El Niño itself has
dissipated, but the effects on global air temperatures lag for
between three and six months, Karoly said. As the El Niño declines,
the size of the monthly anomalies has been decreasing, with February
2016 showing the biggest anomaly since records began, being an
extraordinary 1.32C hotter than the average February between 1951 and
1980.
Eventually, the monthly
temperature records will stop, Karoly said. “We are still seeing
the tail end of the El Niño warming in global temperatures,” he
said. “We’re not going to set any records later this year.”
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