July the hottest month on record: NOAA

And it’s not just in the U.S. Average July temperatures around the world set heat records too, NPR’s Kat Chow reports. “It’s continuing to warm”, NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch said.

The month of July has been discovered because the hottest month on Earth since document retaining started.

Considering that the temperature for the better half of this year has already been very high, Jessica Blunden, another climate scientist from NOAA, is “99 percent certain” that 2015 will have the hottest record to date. Five months out of the seven have been record warm for their respective months.

Globally, the combined average temperatures over water and land surfaces for the month of July was 1.46 degrees more than the previous average of the 20th century which was 60.4 degrees, claimed the NOAA.

Germany and the United Kingdom both broke all-time July heat records.

“The ocean surface had its warmest July, with a temperature departure from average of 1.35 degrees Fahrenheit”, Crouch said.

“This is consistent with the Met Office’s global temperature forecast which predicted that a record or near record year is very much on the cards for 2015”. Warmer nights contribute to the yearly warmth because it is the combination of lows and highs that are used to calculate the global average. “What does that mean for people on the ground?” he told reporters. “This was the highest for January – July in the 1880 – 2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit”, NOAA said, in its report. In July, surface temperatures in the central Pacific around the equator were about 1.8 degrees F higher than the recent 30-year average.

Keeping in line with the record-breaking temperatures, the first seven months of 2015 were the hottest January-to-July span in recorded history, according to the Associated Press.

NOAA predicts that a strong El Niño is building, one that could rival the intensity of the record 1997 event that influenced weather-related havoc across the globe, from mudslides in California to fires in Australia.

Among the objectives of the UN climate talks is to stop global temperatures from increasing to over 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels that, according to scientists, is the limit beyond which will result in worse flooding, storms, droughts and rising sea levels.