More Record Breaking Heat

Month after month, year after year, decade after decade we keep setting new temperature records. The world’s five warmest years have all occurred in the last five years and the period from 2010-2019 was the hottest decade ever recorded. We have seen 421 consecutive months of above average temperatures. The five warmest decades on record have all occurred in the last 50 years and each successive decade was warmer than any preceding decade.

2019 Adds More Data Points to the Constellation of Hot Data

The heat records keep adding to the mountain of data points that demonstrate that we are suffering from ever worsening global warming. This year (2019) is likely to be the second warmest year in the hottest decade on record. This year will also be remembered for the month of July which is the hottest month ever recorded. The months of June, September, October also broke records. November was the second hottest on record. Except for January of this year, each month in 2019 has been in the top three hottest on record.

New Record Set for the Hottest Month Ever

The summer of 2019 started with the hottest month of June and that was followed by July which is now being considered the hottest month in recorded history.

This is the first time in the 140 years that we have monitored global temperatures that we have seen a global average reading of 62.13 Fahrenheit. July 2019 beat the record set in July 2016.

The World Keeps Warming as We are Running Out of Time

We are seeing heatwaves break records all around the world. From India to Alaska, records are falling as record breaking heat is becoming the new norm.  After a brutal heatwave in the middle of July, Europe suffered through yet another heatwave as the month drew to a close. More than a dozen countries in Europe recently broke heat records including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

Global heat records are also being broken. After the hottest month of June on record, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported that last month was the hottest July on record breaking the record set in 2016. According to Copernicus, every month this year is among the four warmest on record.

Arctic Heatwaves are a Final Warning

When the coldest place on Earth is regularly breaking heat records it may be time to concede that the end may indeed be nigh. The world is heating up but nowhere is this warming trend more pronounced than in the Arctic. The Arctic is getting hotter three times as fast as the rest of the world. This year (2019) was the second or third warmest Arctic spring on record. At the end of March temperatures in parts of the Arctic were 22° C above seasonal norms smashing the all time temperature record for the month. In May it hit  29° C (84° F) in Arkhangelsk, Russia which is situated near the Arctic Ocean. In Koynas, an area east of Arkhangelsk, temperature exceeded 30.6° C (87° F).

Alaska is Warming Faster than the Rest of the U.S.

Record breaking heat is plaguing Alaska. According to NOAA the winter of 2019 in Alaska was the third-warmest on record. This spring there were unseasonably warm temperatures in the frontier state. March temperatures averaged 11° Celsius (C) above normal. On March 30, the Alaskan Arctic recorded temperatures that were 22° C above normal. On March 31 a mass of high pressure in the atmosphere called an "upper-level ridge" in Alaska set records for the month with temperatures in excess of 70° Fahrenheit (F). The so called "omega block" is an area of high pressure that forces the jet-stream to flow around it. Klawock reached 71° F on March 31 and at least five other locations in Alaska set monthly high temperature records.

United States Rocked by Summer Heat

Heatwaves are increasingly common and increasingly intense and long lasting in the U.S.  June was hot in the U.S. and so was July. The month of July started with a heatwave that enveloped almost half the country and just past the middle of the same month another heatwave saw even hotter temperatures.

While the June heatwave saw temperatures exceed 90 Fahrenheit (32° Celsius) in one third of the country, the second July heatwave saw more than half of the country enduring temperatures surpassing 100° F (38° C) when the humidity was factored.

The Deadly Collusion of Heat and Poverty

The combination of heat and poverty threatens the lives of millions of people in countries like India, China, Nepal, Zimbabwe.  If we do not substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, it will get much worse for everyone but a warmer planet will be particularly brutal for the world's poor.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) India is among the countries that will suffer the most from climate change. That is not only because of an increasing frequency and duration of heatwaves it is also because India is one of the most populace countries in the world with with one of the highest incidences of poverty. More than 86 percent of the country lives on less than $5.50 per day.

Asia is Heating Up and the South May Soon be Uninhabitable

Asia is one of the world's hottest continents and it is also the most populated continent in the world with 60 percent of the total population of the Earth. Like many other places around the world many of the 50 countries in Asia are suffering from heatwaves in 2019. In the period between April and June of this year India was hit with protracted heatwaves as was neighboring Pakistan and a number of other Asian countries including Vietnam, Kuwait, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

Vietnam was hit with a heatwave in April that included setting a record for the hottest day ever in the country. The Vietnam national weather service reported that Ha Tinh, a town about 320km south of Hanoi, recorded a high temperature of 43.4°C. This new national heat record breaks the record that was set just four years ago. What makes this particularly anomalous is the fact that the hottest months in Vietnam are usually in June and July.