And another warm temperature record bites the dust. Then another, and another, with still more to come.

New data released from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that August was the warmest such month on record, the summer months of June through August were the warmest on record for the planet, and the year-to-date also set a record for the hottest such period both on land and in the sea.

A statistical analysis from scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) found that there is a 97% likelihood, given the record warm first eight months of the year, that 2015 will go on to exceed the record for the warmest year, which was set last year.

In fact, global average sea surface temperatures for the summer were so warm that they set a record of special interest to weather and climate geeks: the departure from the 20th century average — 1.35 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 degrees Celsius) above normal — was the highest departure from average for this period since records began in 1880, NOAA found.

The value also exceeded the previous record for the warmest summer ocean temperatures, which occurred in 2011, by 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit (0.06 degrees Celsius).

Running rank in 2015 global average temperatures compared to the previous warmest years on record. Image: NOAA/NCEI

In other words, not only was the record broken, but it was broken by such a significant margin that the margin itself also set a record.

August of this year tied with January 2007 as the third-warmest monthly temperature departure, behind February 2015 and March 2015.

Even more remarkable, though, is that NOAA found that out of 1,628 monthly records in its database, five months of 2015 are among the top 10 monthly temperature departures.

This gives an idea of just how unusually toasty the planet is this year so far.

Deke Arndt, chief of the NCEI climate monitoring branch, said that in order to avoid the warmest year record, global temperatures would have to average near the 20th century average for several months — something we haven't done since the 1980s.

"We would have to see some really unusual cooling behavior," he said.

What is the cause?

All of these milestones point to a climate system that is being buffeted by human forces, including the emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, as well as natural factors, such as a strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Both the global land temperatures and ocean temperatures set record highs in August, during the summer months and also for the year-to-date. According to NOAA, August was the sixth month in 2015 that has broken its monthly temperature record (after February, March, May, June and July).

The year-to-date global average surface temperature for the oceans and the land was 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.84 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average, NOAA data shows. This was the highest for the first eight months of the year in the 1880-2015 record, breaking the previous record set in 2010 by 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit (0.10 degrees Celsius).

NOAA data, and information from NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency, show that South America and parts of North America, Africa, Europe and Asia experienced record warmth during the first eight months of the year.

South America had its warmest June through August period on record, which was its winter season.

"The historical data suggest it would take a remarkable and abrupt reversal" in global temperatures over the rest of the year to disrupt 2015's march toward the milestone of the Earth's warmest year, scientists wrote in a blog post on a NOAA website.

Other data — tree rings, ice cores and coral formations in the ocean — have shown that the Earth is now the warmest it has been since at least 4,000 years ago. Temperatures have risen nearly in lockstep with concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are now higher than they have been in all of human history.

Scientists say the difference between this warm period and previous ones is that humans are now the main driver of the warming, not natural factors like volcanoes, changes in the Earth's orbit and other sources of climate fluctuations.

This is consistent with what is expected from the ways that manmade global warming from the burning of fossil fuels interacts with natural climate variability, which results in a staircase of warming, not a smooth climb as many believe.

On top of manmade global warming, a strong El Niño event is underway right now in the tropical Pacific Ocean, helping to boost global temperatures even further. Arndt likened its effects to "standing on tippy toes" while climbing a flight of stairs.

Temperature anomaly time series for the first eight months of the year, showing how much warmer 2015 has been compared to other years since 1880. Image: NOAA/NCEI

"Both of those together work to create the warmest temperature on record," Arndt said. "We would not be threatening records repeatedly if we had not climbed those stairs."

In some ways, we already have set the warmest year on record, since the past 12 months have seen global average temperatures that were well above the previous warmest 12-month period.

"The past 12 months is already by far the warmest on record and I do not know why we are hung up on calendar years," wrote Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in an email to Mashable.

In addition, a longer-term shift in the Pacific Ocean, which is part of a cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, may also be helping to transfer heat from the oceans to the atmosphere, according to a recent analysis by the UK Met Office. It predicted that 2015 and 2016 are both likely to tie or break global average surface temperature records.

The past 15 years have seen record after record fall by the wayside. Consider that 13 of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred this century, and no record cold year has been set since 1911.