Last month was the hottest August in modern history, in the latest sign of an unusually warm year across the world’s land and sea surfaces, USA government scientists said Thursday.
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Like a broken record, we are breaking records for temperature over and over and over again. Since 2000, there have been 30 monthly heat records broken and 11 seasonal heat records broken. In a graphic showing the six hottest years on record that Arndt likened to a horse race, it’s clear that 2015 is the American Pharaoh of global heat. Each of those records was broken by 0.18°F (or more).
Records have been kept of monthly measurements from land and sea dating back to 1880.
Scientists said that global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels is aggravating El Niño, the cause of the water temperature rise. “As individuals, though, this is yet another reminder of the impact our unprecedented and inadvertent experiment – an experiment that began with the Industrial Revolution – is having on our planet today”. The year-to-date average global temperature is 1.51 degrees above the 20th century average, which is 0.18 degrees above temperatures seen in 2010.
The fact that the temperature has peaked in August at the ocean surface can be explained by the presence of the equatorial Pacific warm current El Nino, which reappeared in March. Those are “relatively large jumps over the last record” in the world of climate monitoring, Arndt said. But Arndt says that was before August’s temperature average was factored in.
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But, in a new twist, NOAA now is predicting a drier spell for northern Minnesota, starting in December and remaining drier than normal throughout winter, into early spring.
