Another month, another global heat record broken, by far – ‘This is what anthropogenic global warming looks like, just hotter and hotter’
By Seth Borenstein
20 July 2015 WASHINGTON (Associated Press) – Earth dialed the heat up in June, smashing warm temperature records for both the month and the first half of the year. Off-the-charts heat is “getting to be a monthly thing,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This is the third month this year that we’ve broken the monthly record.” “There is almost no way that 2015 isn’t going to be the warmest on record,” she added. NOAA calculated that the world’s average temperature in June hit 61.48 degrees Fahrenheit (16.33 Celsius), breaking the old record set last year by 0.22 degrees (.12 degrees Celsius). Usually temperature records are broken by one or two one-hundredths of a degree, not nearly a quarter of a degree, Blunden said. And the picture is even more dramatic when the entire year is considered. The first six months of 2015 were one-sixth of a degree warmer than the old record, set in 2010, averaging 57.83 degrees (14.35 Celsius). The old record for the first half of the year was set in 2010, the last time there was an El Niño — a warming of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. But in 2010, the El Niño petered out. This year, forecasters are predicting this El Niño will get stronger, not weaker. “If that happens, it’s just going to go off the charts,” Blunden said. […] “This is what anthropogenic global warming looks like, just hotter and hotter,” said Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona. [more]
