Extreme heat warnings extending from western Kansas to eastern Ontario this week underscored the significance of reports from two key U.S. climate-tracking agencies that 2016’s heat is set to exceed the record temperatures experienced around the world last year.
Hot as last year was, “2016 has blown that out of the water,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told media. Observations by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), using slightly different methodologies, both “put the planet on track to surpass 2015 as the hottest on record,” reports Climate Central’s Andrea Thompson.
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According to NOAA, June’s global temperature of 0.90°C above the 20th century average marked “an unprecedented 14 consecutive record-hot months,” the Thompson adds.
“We are in a neighbourhood beyond anything we had seen before early 2015,” Deke Arndt, head of NOAA’s climate monitoring division, told Climate Central in an email. “We’ve left the 20th century far behind. This is a big deal.”
