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June Does It Again: Global Temperature Sets 14th Consecutive Monthly Record

Departure from average for the global January-through-June temperature for the years 1880 - 2016. As is evident here and in Figure 1, this year has seen by far the warmest temperatures on record for the year-to-date period. Image: NOAA/National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Even with the intense 2015 - 2016 El Niño event out of the picture, June 2016 was still the planet's warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Tuesday. In the NOAA database, June 2016 came in 0.90°C (1.62°F) warmer than the 20th-century average for June, beating the previous record for June, set in 2015, by 0.02°C. This ties with May 2016 for the smallest margin the monthly global temperature has broken a record by since August 2015. NASA also reported the warmest June in its database—though just barely—as did the Japan Meteorological Agency.

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The impressive global warmth in recent months is due to the steady build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases due to human activities, plus a spike due to a large amount of heat being released from waters in the Eastern Pacific due to the powerful 2015-16 El Niño event