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May continues hot streak of monthly global temperatures



May 2016 monthly average temperature anomalies, compared to the 20th Century average. Credit: NASA GISS

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Scott Sutherland

Meteorologist/Science Writer

Thursday, June 16, 2016, 6:41 PM - El Niño may have dissipated, but global warming is still pressing on, turning May into the next hottest month in the longest streak of hottest months ever recorded.

The latest global temperature analysis has been released by NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and May 2016 is another record-breaker.

• Hottest month of May on record, at +0.87oC above the 20th century average from NOAA and +0.98oC according to NASA (The Japan Meteorological Agency records it at +0.74oC, which ties their record for May 2015)

• Hottest March-April-May (northern spring/southern fall) across the globe, over both land and oceans, and in both hemispheres, at +1.06oC over the 20th century average according to NOAA and +1.12oC according to NASA. By NOAA's records, this is the first time that spring temperatures have exceeded +1.0oC above the 20th century average.

• Hottest year-to-date, Jan-May, on record, coming in at +1.08oC above the 20th century average

• Now sustains a 13-month string of record-breaking hottest months, since May 2015, continuing the longest such string of broken records in NOAA's 137-year tally of global temperatures (April's 12-month streak was the previous record).

Credit: NOAA

According to NOAA:

May 2016 was characterized by warmer to much warmer than average conditions across Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Central America, northern South America, northern Europe, Africa, Oceania, and parts of southern and eastern Asia, according to the Land & Ocean Temperature Percentiles map above. Areas with record warmth included much of Southeast Asia and parts of northern South America, Central America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and northern and eastern Australia. Near- to cooler-than-average conditions were present across much of the contiguous U.S., central and southern South America, and much of central Asia. No land areas experienced record cold temperatures during May 2016. According to NCEI's Global Regional analysis, five of the six continents had at least a top nine warm May, with Oceania observing a record high average temperature for May since continental records began in 1910.

Warmer to much-warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed much of the world's oceans, with pockets of record warmth observed across every major ocean basin, including northwestern and southwestern Atlantic Ocean, much of the Indian Ocean, and parts of the southwest Pacific Ocean, and southern Pacific Ocean. Near- to much-cooler-than-average conditions were present across the North Atlantic to the south of Greenland, north-central Pacific Ocean, and parts of the Southern Ocean. The only area to experience record cold May temperatures was the southern Atlantic Ocean, southeast of South America.

A whole new level of global heat

Tallying up global temperatures so far for the year, 2016 is revealing a whole new level of heat that our planet is experiencing.



2016 monthly temperatures compared to the previous 7 record-setting years. Credit: NOAA

Rather than showing month-by-month temperatures, the above graph tracks the year-to-date temperatures - first January, then January-February, then January-March, and so on, until the latest January-May entry.

Based on this, 2016 is well above the previous hottest years, and regardless of the switch to ENSO-neutral conditions in the Pacific, and the likely development of a La Niña in the equatorial Pacific Ocean by sometime in the summer, this year is still on track to be the next hottest year in the record books.

Source: NOAA

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