Published: September 12,2016
How temperatures across the globe compared to normal during August 2016. (NASA)
In what has become a common refrain this year, last month ranked as the hottest August on record, according to 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 1.76˚F (0.98˚C) 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.
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 — more so even than July — that it
tied that month’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 Niño.
In
NASA’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 year’s record warmth, with El
Niño providing only a small boost.
"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 2˚C (3.6˚F) over pre-industrial levels by the end of the
century. There have even been discussions to aim for an even more
stringent target of 1.5˚C.
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.
Through July, the global
temperature for the year was 1.31˚C (2.36˚F) 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.
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