21 July 2016

NOAA Releases June Global Climate Data; 378th Consecutive Month Above Normal!

Posted by Dan Satterfield

June 2016 was the htotest June on record in NOAA's 137 year data base. The global oceans were also the warmest on record.

June 2016 was the hottest June on record in NOAA’s 137 year data base. The global oceans were also the warmest on record.


When science wants to find something out, they tend to work in independent teams to do it. If all teams get the same results, this increases the confidence that the science is good. The most famous case of this is the discovery that the Universe was not only expanding, but that the expansion was speeding up. When it comes to the global temperatures, there are 4 main groups. NASA GISS, NOAA, Japan’s Metr. Agency, and the UK Met. Office/Hadley Center outside of London. All three of these groups agree very closely.
NASA released its data for June and for the first 6 months of the year yesterday. It was stunning, and you can read and see it here. NOAA has now posted their June data, and it is much the same.
From NOAA tonight: (my highlights)
Warmer to much-warmer-than-average conditions dominated across much of the globe’s surface, resulting in the highest temperature departure for June since global temperature records began in 1880. This was also the 14th consecutive month the monthly global temperature record has been broken—the longest such streak in NOAA’s 137 years of record keeping. The June 2016 combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average, besting the previous record set in 2015 by 0.02°C (0.04°F). June 2016 marks the 40th consecutive June with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average. The last time June global land and ocean temperatures were below average was in 1976 (-0.07°C / -0.13°F). June 2016 tied with March 2015 as the ninth highest monthly temperature departure among all months (1,638) on record. Overall, 14 of the 15 highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred since February 2015, with January 2007 among the 15 highest monthly temperature departures. June 2016 also marks the 378th consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average. The last month with temperatures below the 20th century average was December 1984 (-0.09°C / -0.16°F).

 

NOAA1

From NOAA/NCEI

201606 (1)More from NOAA: The majority of the world’s land surface had warmer to much-warmer-than-average temperatures during June 2016, with the largest temperature departures observed across much of north-central Russia. Averaged as a whole, the global temperature across land surfaces for June 2016 was 1.24°C (2.23°F) above the 20th century average—tying with 2015 as the highest June temperature in the 1880–2016 record. June 2016 marks the 34th consecutive June with temperatures at least nominally above average. The last time global land surface temperatures were below average in June was in 1982 (-0.05°C / -0.09°F).

 

One of my favorite fellow science writers is Andy Freedman at Mashable, and he has an excellent post you should read about this data. He is absolutely right when he says that “The climate most of us grew up with is gone for good”

NOTE: It’s a common myth that this heat is just the Earth coming out of the ice age, but below is what I wrote on a Facebook post about this myth:
We came out of the last ice age around 12K years ago and rather abruptly. We then slipped back into it for around 1000 years (This period is called the Younger Dryas: ~10,800 to 10K years ago). The present interglacial has lasted around 10K years (Author Brian Fagan has called this the long summer, and all of recorded history happened in this period). The warmest part of it was around 6-8K years ago. The orbital cycles of Earth indicate we should be slowly cooling, and we were indeed, until the greenhouse gases started rising 150 years ago. You can see the slow cooling in the Greenland ice core data (I was present when the NEEM ice core was recovered in Greenland, and saw the data each day as the drill brought the ice to the surface where it was analyzed). The graph below does not show the jump of the last 150 years since it has been so rapid.

From: http://amap.no/acia/

From: http://amap.no/acia/

 

Below is the temp. record, and you CAN see the change of the last 137 years.

gistemp_Jan-Jul_preI_print