August ties july as hottest month ever on record

How temperatures across the globe compared to normal during August 2016.

Climate Central

In what has become a common refrain this year, last month ranked as the hottest August on record, according toĀ NASA data released Monday. Not only that, but the month tied July as the hottest month the world has seen in the last 136 years.

August came in at 1.76ĖšF (0.98ĖšC) above the average from 1951-1980, 0.16C above August 2014, the previous record holder. The record keeps 2016 on track to be the hottest year in the books by a fair margin.

How temperatures in 2016 have charted against previous years, including the tied record hot months of July and August.
How temperatures in 2016 have charted against previous years, including the tied record hot months of July and August.

That August continued the streak of record hot months this year and tied July as the hottest month was somewhat unexpected. The seasonal temperature cycle generally reaches a peak in July, as it did this year. But August was so anomalously warm ā€” more so even than July ā€” that it tied that monthā€™s overall temperature.

It was also thought that July would likely be the last record hot month of the year, given the dissipation of El NiƱo.

In NASAā€™s dataset, August marks the 11th record-setting month in a row. That streak goes back 15 months through July in data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Each agency handles the global temperature data slightly differently and uses a different period of comparison, leading to slight differences in the monthly and yearly temperature numbers. Overall, though, both datasets show clear agreement in the overall warming trend.

That trend is what Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and other climate scientists emphasize. It is that excess heat that has accumulated over decades thanks to rising levels of greenhouse gases that accounts for the bulk of this yearā€™s record warmth, with El NiƱo providing only a small boost.

How temperatures across the globe compared to normal during August 2016.
How temperatures across the globe compared to normal during August 2016.

 

“Monthly rankings, which vary by only a few hundredths of a degree, are inherently fragile,” Schmidt said in a statement. “We stress that the long-term trends are the most important for understanding the ongoing changes that are affecting our planet.”

International negotiators hope to curtail that long-term trend by limiting warming to less than 2ĖšC (3.6ĖšF) over pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. There have even been discussions to aim for an even more stringent target of 1.5ĖšC.

To show how close the world already is to surpassing that goal, Climate Central has been averaging the NASA and NOAA temperature data each month and comparing that number to the average from 1881-1910, closer to preindustrial times.

Screen Shot 2016-09-13 at 12.09.19 PM

 

Through July, the global temperature for the year was 1.31ĖšC (2.36ĖšF) above the average from that period. A new average will be calculated through August when NOAA releases its temperature data on Sept. 20.

Whether September will continue the record streak is uncertain, but regardless of where it falls, there is already a greater than 99 percent chance that 2016 will take the title of hottest year, Schmidt has said.

 

Source: Climate Central. Reproduced with permission.

Comments

2 responses to “August ties july as hottest month ever on record”

  1. john Avatar
    john

    lets build another coal mine that will fix it

    1. Stewart Rogers Avatar
      Stewart Rogers

      Using super critical coal plants with black coal that creates less emissions. I like your thinking!

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