Once again, monthly global temperatures have hit new highs.
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that July 2016 was the warmest July in 136 years.
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Not only that, but it was also the warmest of any month on record, though that is also because typically July is the warmest month of the year in general.
“It wasn’t by the widest of margins, but July 2016 was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880,” said GISS director Gavin Schmidt.
This record — which was just 0.1 C warmer than the previous records held in 2015, 2011 and 2009 — is just one of a series of monthly temperature records that have persisted since 2014. Earlier this year, both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that 2015 was the warmest year on record, beating out 2014 as the previous record-holder.
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“It appears almost a certainty that 2016 also will be the warmest year on record,” Schmidt said.
Temperatures have been soaring since October 2015 and, while an intense El Niño event contributed to the rising temperatures, Schmidt said that even without it, 2015 would have likely been a warmer-than-average year.