Wednesday, April 20, 2016

NOAA:  Monthly Temperature Reports Are ‘Sounding Like a Broken Record’

Last month was the hottest March on record by far, NOAA confirmed Tuesday.  March was 2.2°F above the 20th century average.  This anomaly (departure from “normal”) was “the highest monthly temperature departure among all months” in the 1880-2016 record.

It follows the hottest February on record in the NOAA dataset, which followed the hottest January on record, hottest December on record, hottest November, hottest October, hottest September, hottest August, hottest July, hottest June, and hottest May.  This 11-month streak “is the longest such streak in NOAA’s 137-year climate record.”
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So we are blowing out the temperature of both of the previous big El Niños by 0.4°C (0.7°F).

And if you are starting to think 2016 is going to be the hottest year on record — despite the fact that 2015 was the hottest year on record by far — you aren’t alone.
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Global mean surface temperature for big El Nino years in degrees Celsius. The shaded area is the typical El Niño period. (Credit: Sou / HotWhopper) Click to Enlarge.
It’s true that we are in (the tail end of) an El Niño, which temporarily raises global temperatures.  As NOAA notes, “the last time a similar strength El Niño occurred” was 1997-1998.  Sou at HotWhopper has created a chart using NASA data comparing the current warming with that of the last two big El Niños:
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Finally, NOAA is concerned that it keeps repeating itself with each new monthly temperature report, opening its news release, “At the risk of sounding like a broken record, March set another heat record for the globe.”

An even bigger concern is that all of these astonishing records means the long-awaited speed up in global temperatures is here.  And that would mean we could see Arctic warming rise a stunning 1°F per decade by the 2020s, which is truly something to worry about.

Read more at NOAA:  Monthly Temperature Reports Are ‘Sounding Like a Broken Record’

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