Global temperatures in July were 0.84 C (1.51 F) above the 1950-1980 average, making it the hottest month since record keeping began, as well as the hottest July ever.
The latest National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) data shows that July is now the tenth consecutive record warm month and 2016 is still on track to be the hottest year on record.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, expects July to be the last record warm month of 2016 as the effects of El Niño fade.
According to the U.K.-based Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS), which last week published similar temperature results:
Global temperature usually peaks in July, when the land masses of the northern hemisphere are on average at their warmest. It varies by more than 3° C over the course of each year. The largest recent deviation from this annual cycle occurred in February this year, but July was still more than 0.5° C warmer than the 1981-2010 average for the month. This made July 2016 the warmest month of any in a data record that can be extended back to the nineteenth century.
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