August 2016 world’s hottest on record

By AG Staff Writer |

AUGUST 2016 WAS the 16th consecutive month to set a global temperature record for that particular month. It was the hottest August since records began 136 years ago, breaking the previous August record set just last year.

August 2016 also tied with July 2016 as the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.

According to a State of the Climate report issued by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today, August 2016 was 0.92°C above the 20th-century average.

2016 is now almost certainly on track to beat 2015 as the Earth’s hottest year on record.

“We’ve now seen record-breaking heat across the globe for the past 16 consecutive months. Six to twelve months ago, the strong El Niño played a part in driving high global temperatures, but that effect has now waned or completely disappeared by August,” said Professor Will Steffen, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra and a Climate Councillor at the Climate Council of Australia.

“The influence of climate change in driving these continuous monthly records is now coming through loud and clear,” he said.

Temperature anomaly in °C (difference from 1980-2015 annual mean). (Credit: Joshua Stevens, based on data from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) </s> Earth smashes yet another heat record; 16th month in a row

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday said August's temperature of 61.74 degrees (16.52 Celsius) was .09 degrees (.05 Celsius) warmer than the old August record set last year, and was the 16th consecutive month of record-breaking heat. NOAA monitoring chief Deke Arndt said it was also the hottest summer, with 2016 on pace to smash last year's record for the hottest year.

August 2016 was also 1.66 degrees (0.92 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average. It was the fifth hottest month of any kind recorded, going back to 1880. Six of the 17 hottest months on record have been the summer months of 2015 and 2016.

FILE - In this Dec. 16, 2015 file photo, professor Stephen Hawking listens to a news conference in London. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, said that August¿s temperature of 61.74 degrees (16.52 Celsius) was the 16th month in a row that Earth set a record for the hottest month. NOAA monitoring chief Deke Arndt said it was also the hottest summer, with 2016 on pace to smash last year¿s record for the hottest year. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

The June-through-August summer was 2.18 degrees (1.21 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average and beat the old summer heat record, set last year, by one-fifth of a degree (0.11 Celsius), NOAA said.

"The needle has been shoved all the way over into the red by greenhouse gases," Arndt said.

NOAA's announcement came on a day when 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including Stephen Hawking and 30 Nobel laureates, released an open letter urging American leaders not to pull out of an international agreement to curb global warming.

Organizer and MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel said the scientists wrote the letter in response to the Republican party platform that rejects the Paris climate agreement reached last December. The letter said presidential nominee Donald Trump's advocacy of withdrawing from that agreement would "send a clear signal to the rest of the world: The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change."

Pulling out of the Paris accord, Emanuel said, "will accelerate our head-long plunge into a riskier and riskier climate."

"Everywhere we look we see signs that the climate really is changing," Emanuel said. "We're getting wake-up calls more frequently and we really have to do something about this." </s> The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday said August’s temperature of 61.74 degrees was .09 degrees warmer than the old August record set last year, and was the 16th consecutive month of record-breaking heat. NOAA monitoring chief Deke Arndt said it was also the hottest summer, with 2016 on pace to smash last year’s record for the hottest year.

August 2016 was also 1.66 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average. It was the fifth hottest month of any kind recorded, going back to 1880. Six of the 17 hottest months on record have been the summer months of 2015 and 2016.

The June-through-August summer was 2.18 degrees (1.21 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average and beat the old summer heat record, set last year, by one-fifth of a degree (0.11 Celsius), NOAA said.

“The needle has been shoved all the way over into the red by greenhouse gases,” Arndt said.

NOAA’s announcement came on a day when 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including Stephen Hawking and 30 Nobel laureates, released an open letter urging American leaders not to pull out of an international agreement to curb global warming.

Organizer and MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel said the scientists wrote the letter in response to the Republican party platform that rejects the Paris climate agreement reached last December. The letter said presidential nominee Donald Trump’s advocacy of withdrawing from that agreement would “send a clear signal to the rest of the world: The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change.”

Pulling out of the Paris accord, Emanuel said, “will accelerate our head-long plunge into a riskier and riskier climate.”

“Everywhere we look we see signs that the climate really is changing,” Emanuel said. “We’re getting wake-up calls more frequently and we really have to do something about this.” </s> The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday said August’s temperature of 61.74 degrees (16.52 Celsius) was .09 degrees (.05 Celsius) warmer than the old August record set last year, and was the 16th consecutive month of record-breaking heat. NOAA monitoring chief Deke Arndt said it was also the hottest summer, with 2016 on pace to smash last year’s record for the hottest year.

August 2016 was also 1.66 degrees (0.92 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average. It was the fifth-hottest month of any kind recorded, going back to 1880. Six of the 17 hottest months on record have been the summer months of 2015 and 2016.

The June-through-August summer was 2.18 degrees (1.21 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average and beat the old summer heat record, set last year, by one-fifth of a degree (0.11 Celsius), NOAA said.

“The needle has been shoved all the way over into the red by greenhouse gases,” Arndt said.

NOAA’s announcement came on a day when 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including Stephen Hawking and 30 Nobel laureates, released an open letter urging American leaders not to pull out of an international agreement to curb global warming.

Organizer and MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel said the scientists wrote the letter in response to the Republican party platform that rejects the Paris climate agreement reached last December. The letter said presidential nominee Donald Trump’s advocacy of withdrawing from that agreement would “send a clear signal to the rest of the world: The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change.”

Pulling out of the Paris accord, Emanuel said, “will accelerate our head-long plunge into a riskier and riskier climate.”

“Everywhere we look we see signs that the climate really is changing,” Emanuel said. “We’re getting wake-up calls more frequently and we really have to do something about this.”

The summer of 2016 has meanwhile lurched from one extreme weather disaster to another at great cost in lives and damages. Here are just some of the worst and weirdest, according to insurance statistics and meteorologists:

— Flooding in China’s Yangtze Basin from May through August killed at least 475 people and caused $28 billion in losses.

— A drought in India that started earlier in the year and stretched through June caused about $5 billion in damage.

— Flooding in West Virginia and the mid-Atlantic in June killed 23 people and damaged more than 5,500 buildings.

— Typhoon Nepartak hit the Phillipines, Taiwan and China in July, killing 111 people and causing at least $1.5 billion in damage.

— Flooding in northeast China in July killed 289 people and caused about $5 billion in damage.

— Temperatures reached 129 degrees (54 degrees Celsius) in Kuwait and Iraq in July.

— Flooding in Louisiana in August killed 13 people and caused around $15 billion in damage.

— Flooding in Sudan and South Sudan in July and August killed 129 people and damaged more than 41,000 buildings.

— A long heat wave coupled with high humidity afflicted the U.S. South and East. Savannah, Georgia, had 69 straight days when the temperature hit 90 or higher.

— Typhoon Lionrock hit Japan, China and Korea in August and killed 77 people while damaging more than 20,000 buildings.

— Spain set a record for the hottest September temperature recorded in Europe, with marks of 114 and 115 degrees.

— Localities in the United States broke nearly 15,000 daily records for hot nighttime minimum temperatures from May into September. </s> NASA has released a report that says globally, 2016 was the hottest year on record, for the third year in a row (Credit: NASA )

Another year, another broken temperature record. As early data predicted, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have now reported that globally, 2016 was the warmest year since records began in 1880. That puts us on a streak of three years in a row that have surpassed previous records, painting a worrying picture of a long-term warming trend.

Taking a global average of surface temperatures, 2016 was found to be 1.78º F (0.99º C) warmer than the mean figures from the middle of the 20th century. Overall, the planet has warmed by about 2º F (1.1º C) since 1880, and the 16 years we've had of the 21st century so far are all in the top 17 hottest years on record.

Along with the dubious honor of hottest year so far, 2016 took a hammer to plenty of individual records too, with eight of its 12 months breaking the previous records for hottest average temperature for each respective month. A weak La Niña weather pattern may have slightly cooled things down later in the year, but the months of October to December were still among the warmest known.

"2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row in this series," says Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). "We don't expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear."

These records were set as a global average, which means that not every part of Earth would have experienced above-average temperatures for 2016. In the continental US, the annual mean temperature was the second warmest, while the Arctic was pummeled by a heatwave, resulting in record-low sea ice in the area. Variations like this may be responsible for skepticism of the kind that leads to Senators bringing snowballs onto the Senate floor.

This conclusion was reached by both NASA and NOAA independently, based on data gathered from 6,300 weather stations around the world, research stations in Antarctica and sea surface temperature observations from ships and buoys. From there, the two organizations use slightly different means of calculating their estimates, with NASA saying it's over 95 percent certain in claiming 2016 to be the warmest year on record. </s> THE UK has experienced the hottest July day on record and the second hottest since records began.

A scorching 38.1C was recorded in Cambridge beating the previous July record of 36.7C. The highest recorded temperature still remains the 38.5C reached in Faversham, Kent, on August 10, 2003.

Portsmouth topped the thermometer at a sweltering 30C, making it the hottest day in the city this year.

It was a record breaking day across Western Europe with Paris registering a record high temperature of 42.6C. The heatwave also saw Germany set a new national temperature record of 41.5C with the Netherlands also recording its highest ever temperature at 40.7C.

The warm weather brought out sun worshippers with the region’s beaches enjoying a bumper day.

However conditions across Hampshire look set to cool across the weekend with the Met Office forecasting rain for Saturday and a high of 23C with cloudy conditions and a high of 22C on Sunday. </s> WASHINGTON — The temperature in the Iranian city of Ahvaz climbed Thursday to a blistering 129 degrees, a record high for the Middle Eastern country and among the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth.

Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist with French weather service Meteo France, posted to Twitter that the temperature officially reached 53.7 degrees Celsius, or 128.7 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also the hottest recorded June temperature in Asia, according to Kapikian.

The previous record high in Iran was 127.4, set in 2011 and tied in August 2014.

As The Washington Post first noted, Weather Underground’s website listed the high temperature in Ahvaz on Thursday as 129.2 degrees. With humidity, the heat index reached an astounding 142.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

The incredible temperature comes less than two weeks after Khasab, Oman, a city located on the Persian Gulf, set a global record for “hottest overnight low temperature,” according to Weather Underground. On the morning of June 17, the temperature there dropped to a low of 111.6 degrees.

The World Meteorological Organization officially lists Earth’s all-time high temperature as 134 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in 1913 in Death Valley, California. But that record has been the subject of much debate.

Weather Underground weather historian Christopher Burt lists the “hottest reliably measured temperature on Earth” at 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in Death Valley in June 2013 and Mitribah, Kuwait, in July 2016.

Climate scientists warn that extreme heat will continue to worsen as human activity drives global climate change. In January, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed 2016 as the hottest year on record, marking the third consecutive year of record-high global temperatures.

A recent University of Hawaii study found that without global action to reverse the climate crisis, 3 in 4 people on the planet could be exposed to deadly heat waves by 2100. And even with aggressive emission reductions, up to 48 percent of the global population will likely be plagued by at least 20 days of lethal heat per year by the end of the century.

Last week, extreme heat scorched the U.S. Southwest. In Death Valley, the temperature soared to 127 degrees. And in Phoenix, American Airlines canceled flights as temperatures edged toward 120 degrees — beyond the point that certain types of commercial aircraft can function. </s> Temperatures on Earth were the warmest in 2016 since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, boosting the argument shared by many climate scientists that our planet is changing in significant ways.

The year 2016 was the third consecutive year to set a new record for global average surface temperatures, and far exceeded the temperature mark set in 2015, scientists said today.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), said in a statement that the consistent pattern of record-breaking temperatures is indicative of a "warming trend" taking place on Earth.

“2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row in this series,” Schmidt said. “We don't expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. </s> WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The year 2016 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record, surpassing the exceptionally high temperatures of 2015, according to a consolidated analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).



The globally averaged temperature in 2016 was about 1.1°C higher than the pre-industrial period. It was approximately 0.83° Celsius above the long term average (14°C) of the WMO 1961-1990 reference period, and about 0.07°C warmer than the previous record set in 2015.



WMO reached the conclusion using data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the UK's Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. WMO also draws on reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and the Copernicus Climate Change Service.



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August 2016 becomes the world's hottest on record (since records began 136 years ago) and 16th 'hottest on record' month in a row.