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Global Heat Leaves 20th Century Temps ‘Far Behind’ — June Another Hottest Month on Record
We’ve
left the 20th century far behind. This is a big deal. — Deke
Arndt, head of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental
Information
*****
19
July, 2016
One
of the top three strongest El Ninos on record is now little more than
a memory.
According to NOAA, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Central
Equatorial Pacific hit
a range more typical to La Nina conditions
last week. This cool-pool formation follows a June in which ocean
surfaces in this zone had fallen into temperatures below the normal
range.
(El
Nino had faded away by June and turned toward La Nina-level
temperatures by late June and early July. Despite this Equatorial
Pacific cooling, June of 2016 was still the hottest June on record.
Image source: NOAA.)
But
despite this natural-variability related cooling of the Equatorial
Pacific into below-normal ranges, the globe as a whole continued to
warm relative to previous June temperatures. According to NASA, last
month was the hottest June in the global climate record.
NASA
figures show the month was 0.79 degrees Celsius warmer than the 20th
century baseline (1951 to 1980) average, edging
out June of 2015 (when El Nino was still ramping up) by just 0.01
degree C to take the dubious position of the new hottest June ever
recorded by human instruments. June 2016 was also about 1.01 C hotter
than temperatures in the 1880s, at the start of NASA’s global
climate record.
January
to June — Anomalous Warmth Centers Over Arctic
June
marks the 9th consecutive hottest month on record in the NASA data.
In other words, on a month-to-month comparison, each month since
October of 2015 was the new hottest of those months ever recorded. In
addition, the six-month 2016 climate year period of January to June
showed an average global temperature of about 1.31 C above 1880s
averages — perilously close to the 1.5 degree C global climate
threshold.
(Arctic
heat dominated the first half of 2016 which is likely to end up being
the hottest year ever recorded in the global climate record. Image
source: Berkeley
Earth.)
Distribution
of this anomalous heat during this six-month period, despite the
Equatorial warming pulse related to El Nino, was focused on the
Arctic, as we can see in this
Berkeley Earth graphical composite of
the NASA temperature series above.
Warmest
temperature anomalies for the period appear above the Barents and
Greenland Seas boundaries with the Arctic Ocean and approach 12 C for
the six-month period. During this period, this region has hosted
numerous warm-wind invasions of the Arctic from the south. A second,
similar slot of warm south-to-north air progression appears over
Alaska.
Record
June Warmth Most Apparent at Northern Continental Margins
During
June, the Arctic as a whole remained much warmer than average, with
the region from latitudes 80° to 90° North seeing a +0.8 C
temperature departure in the NASA measure. The highest anomaly
regions globally, however, were near the continental margins
bordering the Arctic Ocean in the region of latitudes 70° to 75°
North. Here temperatures ranged near 2 C above average.
(According
to NASA’s zonal anomaly measure, the northern continental margins
showed the highest temperature anomalies globally. Image source: NASA
GISS.)
Some
parts of this region were particularly hot. These included the region
of Russian Siberia near the Yamal Peninsula, which saw 4-8 C above
average temperatures for the month, the Bering Sea and Northeastern
Siberian region adjacent which saw 2-8 C above average temperatures,
and the Canadian Archipelago which saw 2-4 C above average
temperatures for the month.
Odd
Warm-Air Slot Runs from Equator to West Antarctic Peninsula
Notable
is that visible warm-air slots running from Tropics to Pole appear to
remain intact in the Northeastern Pacific and over Central Asia in
the Northern Hemisphere during early Summer. Meanwhile, an odd
Southern Hemisphere warm-air slot appears to have developed during
June in the region of the Southeastern Pacific.
(June
of 2016 was the hottest June on record. This is what the anomaly
map looked like. Image source: NASA
GISS.)
This
particular Equator-to-Pole heat transfer appears to have run as far
south as the West
Antarctic Peninsula and assisted in producing a 4-8 C above-average
temperature spike
there.
As
the majority of the world remained hotter than normal during June of
2016, the only noted outlier cool region was Central and Eastern
Antarctica which, in spots, saw 4 to 7.1 C below-average
temperatures.
2016
is Blowing All Previous Years Away
Overall,
as El Nino continues to shift toward neutral or La Nina states,
global temperatures should remain lower than during peak periods seen
earlier this year. It’s likely that over the coming six months, the
very long period of new monthly global record temperatures we’ve
seen will eventually be broken by a top-five- or top-10-hottest
month.
(2016
is on track to blow all previous record hot years out of the
water. See
related article here.)
However,
it appears that global heat has in total taken a big step up. As
such, 2016 appears to be set to average near 1.14 to 1.25 C above
1880s levels. That would beat out previous hottest year 2015 by a big
margin. To this point, Deke Arndt, head of NOAA’s National Centers
for Environmental Information, recently noted in The
Scientific American:
“It’s important to keep perspective here. Even if we aren’t setting [monthly] records, we are in a neighborhood beyond anything we had seen before early 2015. We’ve left the 20th century far behind. This is a big deal.”
In
other words, that’s about a decade’s worth of typical
human-forced warming in just one year. If
it shapes up that way, it basically blows all previous years out of
the water.
Pretty nasty to say the least.
Links/Attribution/Statements
Hat
tip to Zack Labe
Hat
tip to DT Lange
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