Leading experts have been telling me that a strong new El Nino event could kick off a renewed surge in warming, with global temperatures beginning again to rise as fast, or faster, than they did from 1975 to 1998.

2015, so far, is blowing the record year of 2014 out of the water.

Looking at these frightening graphs, it’s hard not to be concerned. Indeed, a well known scientist told me in an email last night, “I am emotionally having a hard time because dear god, how can it be this hot?”

Joe Romm in Climate Progress:

Last month was not just the hottest July on record. Since July is “the warmest month of the year globally,” NOAA’s latest monthly State of the Climate Report, notes that July 2015 “was also the highest among all 1627 months in the record that began in January 1880.”

There never was any slow-down in surface temperature warming, and indeed the NOAA report confirms that 2015 is all but certain to crush previous global temperature records. That’s especially likely since the strong underlying global warming trend is being boosted by an emerging “Godzilla El Niño,” as a NASA oceanographer put it.

Here are some of the other records NOAA identifies for “combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces” in the dataset for the month of June from the years 1880 to 2015:

Hottest first seven months of any year “at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.09°C (0.16°F).”

“Austria recorded its hottest July since national records began in 1767.”

“A high pressure dome over the Middle East brought what may be one of the most extreme heat indices ever recorded in the world on July 31st … a heat index of 74°C (165°F).”

It was especially hot for the 6 billion of us up here in the northern hemisphere, where the first seven months of 2015 were a remarkable 0.3°F warmer than the first seven months of any year on record — and nearly a half degree Fahrenheit warmer than any year before 2007:

2014 was the hottest year on record. 2015 will easily top that. And it is entirely possible 2016 could beat 2015, as discussed here. The long-awaited speed up in global surface temperatures appears to be starting now, as heat that has been sequestered in the deep oceans begins to come out in the current El Nino.