August 2020 was the world’s second-warmest August on record – The year 2020 has more than a 99.9 percent chance to rank among the five warmest years on record
By Jeff Masters, Ph.D.
15 September 2020
(Yale Climate Connections) – August 2020 was the second-warmest August since global record keeping began in 1880, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported September 14.
The month was just 0.04 degrees Celsius behind the record set in August 2016. NASA rated the month as the third-warmest August on record, and the Japan Meteorological Agency rated it as the fourth-warmest August on record.
Minor differences in rankings often occur among various research groups, the result of the different techniques they use to handle data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.
The eight months of January through August were 1.03 degrees Celsius (1.85°F) above the 20th-century average, NCEI said. This ranks as the second-warmest such period on record, only 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09°F) behind the record set in 2016. According to NCEI’s annual temperature outlook, the year 2020 has more than a 99.9% chance to rank among the five warmest years on record. If so, calendar years 2014 through 2020 would be the seven warmest years on record.
The outlook finds that 2020 has a 40% chance of displacing 2016 as the warmest year on record. These odds are based on statistical relationships rather than unfolding weather and climate events. The La Niña event now in progress (see below) will make it less likely that 2020 will break the 2016 record. […]
Hottest reliably measured temperature in world recorded history in August
Death Valley, California, hit an astonishing 129.9 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4°C) at 3:41 p.m. PDT, August 16, 2020, at the Furnace Creek Visitor’s Center. This reading was rounded to 130 degrees Fahrenheit in the daily summary from NOAA. […]
China
Torrential downpours continued to affect China in August, killing 92 people and damaging or destroying 310,000 houses. This brings the total damage between June 1 and August 31 from China’s monsoon flooding to $28 billion, with 267 deaths. According to statistics from EM-DAT, the international disaster database, this ranks as the third-most expensive non-U.S. weather disaster since accurate records began in 1990.
An August 2020 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, “Each 0.5°C of Warming Increases Annual Flood Losses in China by More than US$60 Billion,” found that annual average flood losses in China during the period 1984-2018 were $19.2 billion (2015 dollars), which was 0.5% of China’s GDP. Annual flood losses increased to $25.3 billion annually during the period 2006-18. The study predicted that each additional 0.5 degree Celsius of global warming will increase China flood losses by $60 billion per year. [more]
August 2020 was the world’s second-warmest August on record, NOAA reports
