In a story that has become commonplace all through this year, last month edged in as the hottest June in the NASA GISS record. The readings over at NOAA show an even warmer month:
With the demise of El Nino, those temperature departures have dropped slightly, but are still at record-high levels. June was 1.62°F (0.90°C) above the 20th century average according to NOAA and 1.42°F (0.79°C) above the 1951-1980 average, according to NASA. (June was also record warm for the contiguous US., in part because of an intense, record-breaking heat wave that swept the Southwest.)
In NOAA’s records, that makes an unprecedented 14 consecutive record-hot months.
It’s possible we may stop setting official monthly records beginning in July or August. But unless this sizzling trend takes a sharp turn for the freezer, 2016 will end up being the hottest year in the global temperature record. And even in the unlikely event it doesn’t get worse, we’re already in hot water, literally.
Michael Mann, co-creator of the Hockey Stick paleo-climate record, warned, ”Even if we could cease carbon emissions immediately, global temperatures would stabilize very close to 1.5° C (nearly 3° F) warming of the globe relative to the pre-industrial level—a level of warming that world governments agreed to in Paris last year—that would still represent a major threat to humanity in the form of flooding of coastlines, worsened drought, and more destructive extreme weather events.”
Indeed, even if we could stabilize at these temperatures, which are a far cry from the warming to come already baked in according to the consensus of climate models, the Arctic will continue to see record temperatures that could turn ancient permafrost underlying towns and key energy producing regions into giant swamps, some of the world’s greatest reefs would keep falling apart due to the heat, and once in a century super-storms like Sandy or Katrina could become regular, seasonal events.
This is all happening in the background of the Republican National Convention, where the GOP controlled House Science Committee has been harassing NOAA, and both the nominees for president and vice-president have proudly made remarks to great fanfare downplaying climate change or calling it a hoax.