This Past August Was the Hottest Month Ever Recorded Because of Climate Change
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This past August has tied this past July for the dubious distinction of being the hottest month ever recorded, since modern record-keeping began 136 years ago, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This continues a string of record-shattering high monthly temperatures that began a year ago, further ensuring that 2016 will be the hottest year on record. In fact, every month since October 2015 has set the record for monthly high temperature.
Typically, July is the hottest month of the year, but this year’s August was just as hot. By the numbers, August 2016 was 0.29 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the second-hottest August ever recorded, which was in 2014, and 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average temperature for August between 1951 and 1980.
Scientists have attributed the record-breaking August temperatures to El Nino and increased greenhouse gas emissions. “But we’ve had El Niños before, they haven’t given us the record-warm temperatures like this,” said Gavin Schmidt, the director for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, according to The New York Times.
The record-breaking temperatures point to broader and more troubling climate change trends, with rising temperatures leading to the devastation of the wilderness, rising seas and flooding along coastal areas. No word yet on whether we can expect this disconcerting trend to subside.
The Goddard Institute compiled this information from publicly available data pulled from 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, in addition to Antarctic research stations and ships and buoys equipped with instruments measuring sea surface temperature.
