Now we have no qualms in declaring the year 2016 as the hottest on record. The latest data released by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirmed that April 2016 was the hottest April the planet has ever witnessed in modern times.
In fact, April was the third month in a row to break the monthly all-time heat records by a huge margin. February and March were also the hottest respective months in over 130 years. April 2016 is also said to be the seventh consecutive month to be at least 1°C above the 1951 to 1980 mean average for that month.
Also read, February 2016 hottest month ever recorded
The last month had surpassed the earlier record of 0.87°C above the baseline average for April, set in 2010, by 0.24°C. Thus, the global temperature of land and sea was 1.11°C warmer in April than the average temperature for April during the period 1951-1980.
Meteorologist worldwide had expected the strongest El Niño on record to impact global weather conditions but of course, not to this extent.
With Apr update, 2016 still > 99% likely to be a new record (assuming historical ytd/ann patterns valid). pic.twitter.com/GTN9sPL2D7
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) May 14, 2016
With this, we can infer that the year 2016 will be the hottest year on record and probably by the largest margin ever.
The animation below is an interesting representation of changing temperatures during since 1850.
Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) https://t.co/YETC5HkmTr pic.twitter.com/Ypci717AHq — Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 9, 2016
Image credit - smh.com.au
