For the seventh straight month, the average global temperature set a new monthly record going back at least 136 years, spanning the modern global temperature record maintained by NASA’s GISS climate unit. And it wasn’t even close. The average global temperature last month was 1.11°C (about 2 °F) above the global baseline:
The new record surpassed the previous one, set in 2010, by 0.24 degrees C. During that April, temperatures reached 0.87 degrees above the baseline average.
The increases have also had large-scale environmental impacts, from causing one quarter of the coral colonies around the the world to suffer often fatal bleaching, to making unusually powerful heat wave in Africa not the exception, but the norm.
Note in the image, the effect has been especially pronounced up north. In some places around the Arctic circle, the temperature has averaged almost 7 °C (12.5 °F) above normal. If that trend continues for much longer this year, it will almost certainly mean a larger reduction in the north polar ice cap later in the summer than ever recorded to date. Pushing us ever closer to an ice free North Pole at some point.