Back on 5th July I was writing about the release of data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). This official EU body had data that reported that June 2019 was the hottest June ever recorded on planet earth. It was the first of various datasets. The latest update is that the NASA GISS data for June has now been released.
The chart above comes from here.
The actual raw dataset for every month going back to 1880, can be found in a basic text layout here.
That second one can be a tad confusing.
- I can see June 2019 has 93, what does that mean? – It means that June 2019 was 0.93 Celsius above the June norm (based on a 1951-to-1980 baseline)
- Yes, but I can see 118 in that same table for last March, does that mean it was even hotter? – Nope, that simply records that last March was above the norm for March, it is not an overall absolute. On average March is a couple of degree colder than June.
To clarify that last point even further, the average global temperature has a seasonal cycle. It is like this because most of the land on the planet is located in the Northern Hemisphere.
Look back to 1880 and you can see that June 2019 has been the hottest ever June.
Key Observation: Not the hottest Month, just the hottest June.
What did June 2019 feel like?
As reported by the Washington Post …
The month was punctuated by a severe heat wave that struck Western Europe in particular during the last week, with numerous all-time-hottest-temperature records falling in countries with centuries-old data sets.
Notably, 13 locations in France surpassed their highest temperature ever recorded. The heat wave’s highest temperature of 114.6 degrees Fahrenheit (45.9 Celsius), posted in Gallargues-le-Montueux, was 3.2 degrees above the old record, set during an infamous heat wave in July and August 2003.
What About July?
What it does also mean is that July has a crack at being the hottest month ever recorded on planet earth …
We have already seen record breaking extremes being recorded in several places, for example …
- Nunavut, Canada hit a record high of 21.0 C last Sunday. That broke the previous 20C record
- Anchorage in Alaska hit 90F, and that also was a new record. Their average there at this time of year is 65F
So will July be the hottest ever?
Perhaps.
It will definitely make the top 5 warmest, and probably make it into the top 3. It just might be the warmest month ever. It is however simply too early to tell.
Meanwhile …
Fossil fuel funded denialism continues to flourish in the face of overwhelming evidence, the idiot-in-chief continues to do nothing except tweet out racist tweets to great applause from his cult devotees, and the subject matter experts, the climate scientists who truly understand what is happening, are quite literally freaking out about everything they are measuring …
climate scientists often resemble Sarah Connor of the Terminator franchise, who knows of a looming catastrophe but must struggle to function in a world that does not comprehend what is coming and, worse, largely ignores the warnings of those who do. “An accurate representation” of the Connor comparison, one scientist darkly notes, “would have more crying and wine.”