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hottest year
'Climate Change Is Here': August Was Another Hottest Month for the Record Books
According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, August 2016's temperature was 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest August in 2014. Last month, it was also 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean August temperature from 1951 to 1980.
Notably, NASA points out, "the seasonal temperature cycle typically peaks in July."
But recent months have been anything but typical. "The record warm August continued a streak of 11 consecutive months dating back to October 2015 that have set new monthly high-temperature records," NASA said in a press release.
What's more, climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf pointed out on Twitter that the temperature has risen even though this year's unusually strong El Nino is on the wane.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release its own August figures later this month.
Regardless, Mary Beth Griggs wrote for Popular Science, "this heat streak continues to put 2016 in the running to be be the hottest year since 2015, which broke the record set by 2014."
And while the endless string of "hottest months" may induce fatigue among some observers, Astrid Caldas of the Union of Concerned Scientists explains in a blog post on Monday why the string of broken records is still "big news."
"While there may be a tendency to be complacent about the recurring record temperatures, with each month come more climate-related consequences that cannot be ignored, and they make for big news stories," Caldas writes. "From wildfires and droughts to devastating floods, climate change fingerprint is all around us and does play a role in making events more extreme. An example are the recent Louisiana floods, caused by intense rains which, according to the science of attribution, were at least 40% more likely to happen because of climate change."
"Climate change is here, its effects are being already felt in a variety of ways...and we do not need to wait years or decades to see its effects," she says. "We should heed the warnings and act now, investing in preparedness and emissions reductions, so as to minimize possible added (and maybe worse) future risks and impacts."
Smashing All Previous Records, 2015 on Track to Be Hottest Year Yet
Moreover, scientists say this trend is likely to continue, and that 2016 could surpass 2015's record-breaking temperatures.
According to NOAA, "The June globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.27degF (1.26degC) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for June in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2012 by 0.11degF (0.06degC)."
This followed reports from NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency last week, which found similar results. According to both NASA and NOAA, the year-to-date period (January-June) was also the warmest such period on record, with four of the six warmest months in recorded history occurring so far in 2015, putting us on the path to breaking 2014's record as the hottest documented year.
As journalist Andrew Freeman notes, "The heat in 2015 isn't just breaking records, it's smashing them."
Scientists attribute this heat to human-induced global warming and a particularly potent El Nino event, which meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters says "continues to intensify."
"This extra bump in temperature, when combined with the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, makes it likely that 2015 will be Earth's second consecutive warmest year on record," Masters wrote on his Wunderground blog on Monday.
Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), explained recently how climate change interacts with an El Nino weather pattern to drive overall temperature increases.
"Climate change is a long-term driver, so that's like standing on an escalator as it goes up," Arndt said during a press conference call last month. Alternately, El Nino "is like jumping up and down while you're on that escalator."
"So, the longer that we go into history, we're riding up the escalator. And now that we're getting an El Nino event, we happen to be jumping up at the same time, and so they play together to produce outcomes like what is likely to be the warmest year on record," Arndt said.
Further, citing data from the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate & Society, ThinkProgress notes a more than 85 percent chance that this current El Nino may last until May 2016, with the strongest period being December through February.
"If this pattern plays out, then 2016 would likely top whatever temperature record 2015 sets -- again, possibly by a wide margin," ThinkProgress reports.
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