This story has been updated.
On Friday, NASA released the
latest temperature data for the globe, showing that March of 2016 was the
hottest March on record since reliable measurements began in 1880. The month
was 1.28 degrees Celsius, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than the average
temperature in March from 1951 through 1980, with particularly scorching
temperatures in the Arctic (as has been the case throughout this year so far).
This follows on temperatures for January and February that,
NASA data show, were also the warmest for their respective months in the
agency’s dataset. The February departure even prompted the following Tweet from
Gavin Schmidt, who directs the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
If you dip back into last year, meanwhile, you find still more monthly
temperature records – but you’ll also note that the temperature departures in
2016 have, so far, exceeded even those in 2015, the official warmest year on
record. This extreme heat around the world, which scientists believe reflect
both a now-weakening El Nino event and also the background influence of climate
change, has traveled alongside striking impacts. Coral reefs arebleaching and in
some cases dying, Greenland has shown major meltingearlier
in the year than at any time on record, and Arctic sea ice has set several
records so far this year for low winter extent. Stefan Rahmstorf, a researcher
with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has already shown just
how much change these data represent since the year 1880:
The analysis suggests that, if temperatures indeed persist at these high
levels, then the globe might be nearing a 1.5 degree Celsius increase over
pre-industrial temperatures, which is one of the thresholds that the
international community has recognized as important to avoid.
And as if that’s not enough, NASA’s Schmidt just predicted, based on the
first three months of this year alone, that 2016 as a whole will set another
all time temperature record, outdistancing both 2014 and 2015:
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which also
keeps a dataset constructed in a somewhat different way from NASA’s, has not
yet reported on March’s global temperatures — its assessment is expected next
week.
And then, there are the satellites – the temperature datasets relied
upon most by those who tend to question climate change. These, too, have been
showing quite hot temperatures lately.
According to the
University of Alabama-Huntsville team, March of 2016 saw the third largest warm
anomaly, or departure from average, of any month in their satellite dataset,
which goes back to late 1978. The month was 0.73 degrees Celsius, or 1.31
degrees Fahrenheit, above average, the group reported, for a region of the
atmosphere known as the “lower troposphere” (from the Earth’s surface up to
about 6 miles into the atmosphere). That made it the warmest March on record,
and the third most anomalously hot month other than February of this year and
April of 1998 (which fell during another strong El Nino event).
We still haven’t sorted out
all the consequences of the burst of major heat that the planet is now seeing,
and with El Nino fading, it isn’t expected to continue at this high of a pitch.
Still, it’s startling – bringing into focus, perhaps as never before, what a
warming planet really looks like
