- June 2017 was the third-hottest June ever recorded, the 41st June in a row — and the 390th consecutive month — that saw the average global temperature rise above the 20th-century average.
- Not only that, but January-to-June 2017 was the second-hottest January-to-June ever recorded.
- All of which means that 2017 is on pace to be the second-hottest year since global temperature data first started being recorded in 1880 — and there’s not even an El Niño event this year to boost temperatures.
June 2017 was the third-hottest June ever recorded, the 41st June in a row — and the 390th consecutive month — that saw the average global temperature rise above the 20th-century average.
Not only that, but January-to-June 2017 was the second-hottest January-to-June ever recorded.
All of which means that 2017 is on pace to be the second-hottest year since global temperature data first started being recorded in 1880 — and there’s not even an El Niño event this year to boost temperatures.
According to scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the average global temperature in June 2017 was 1.48 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.64 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 59.9 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 degrees Celsius). June 2016 was the hottest yet, and June 2015 was the second hottest.
The average global temperature from January to June 2017 was 1.64 degrees Fahrenheit (0.91 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 56.3 degrees (13.5 degrees Celsius), NOAA reports, just 0.29 degrees Fahrenheit (0.16 degrees Celsius) lower than the record set in 2016.
Joe Romm of ThinkProgress reported that these numbers have climate scientists particularly alarmed, as they come in a year when there was no El Niño event. Both 2015 and 2016 set new records, for instance, and a strong El Niño was partially to blame in each year.
“Normally, the hottest years on record occur when the underlying human-caused global warming trend gets a temporary boost from an El Niño’s enhanced warming in the tropical Pacific,” Romm writes. “This matters because when a month — or six-month period — sees record high global temperatures in the absence of an El Niño, that is a sign the underlying global warming trend is stronger than ever.”
As Romm noted earlier this year, 2017 already set “a remarkable new record for global warming” in March, the first month to exceed the 1981–2010 average by a full 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) despite there being no El Niño event.
Climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress, “As if it wasn’t shocking enough to see three consecutive record-breaking years, in 2014, 2015, and 2016, for the first time on record, we’re now seeing near-record temperatures even in the absence of the El Niño ‘assist’ that the previous record year benefited from.”
Mann added that the NOAA data so far in 2017 serve as “a reminder that climate change has not, despite the insistence of climate contrarians, ‘paused’ or even slowed down.”
