We’ve had some hot, hot, hot days in the last couple of weeks. But not as hot as the month of July was – because it has never been this hot, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records dating back to the late 1800s.
And it won’t be long until Earth will experience its hottest year on record. Data released by NASA, NOAA, and the Japan Meteorological Agency shows that in spite of July being on average the hottest month we have, this year’s July has exceeded all expectations. Temperatures have most likely reached their highest threshold ever experienced on record.
The previous warmest month, July, 1998 was 0.14 degrees colder than this year’s, according to NOAA calculations. Jake Crouch, NOAA’s climate researcher, says he isn’t surprised at all that this new milestone has been reached, because it falls in line with what we already know: our planet is warming.
While Africa has yet to surpass its hottest temperature – recorded in July 2002 – other regions around the globe have also experienced their warmest this year, such as most of northern South America, regions in central Asia and southern Europe, and the far western United States.
Surprising, however, is that even though the western states were blistering hot, the surrounding area of Toledo has experienced a much cooler and wetter weather than what’s usually normal in this time of year.
According to the average daily mean temperature reported form the Toledo Express Airport, the temperatures were 2.8 degrees cooler than normal. The National Weather Service defines the ‘normal’ based on an average calculated from 1981 through 2010.
NASA’s global analysis coincides with the worrying trends spotted by NOAA, where every month of this year has brought a new warmth record, with the crowning records brought by June and July, the back-to-back warmest months ever caught on record.
Experts worry that 2015 will imminently bring with it the record for the warmest year, stealing the title from 2014. Jessica Blunden, climate scientist at NOAA, is 99 percent certain that, under the current circumstances, 2015 will blow out of the water any other warm year.
One of the surefire signs indicating this is the fact that oceans are trending warmer, and a dramatic cooling down that would prevent it is less likely to occur. Sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific have also been much warmer than normal, surpassing with 1.35 degrees the recorded temperatures for the region and month of the year.
All the data presented in the collaborative report point to one thing: it doesn’t matter what climate-change doubters say, the Earth’s warming is a trend that has had no rest since 1998.
Image Source: National Geographic