Record Warming Continues

It's been all over the news that January 2016 was the hottest January ever recorded and that this was the ninth hottest month in a row. By the way, 15 of the hottest 16 years ever recorded have occurred since 2001.

Graph of temperature trends in relation to El Niño and La Niña events. red bars represent global temperature anomalies in El Niño years, with the red line showing the trend. Blue bars depict La Niña years, and the blue line shows that trend. Neutral years are shown in gray, and the dashed black line shows the overall temperature trend since 1950. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Earth Observatory; fig. upd. 2016-01-25)

So, why are there still people who believe there has been no warming for xxx number of years (fill in the number of your choice)? Take a look at the data above and pay particular attention to the span from 1998 to the present. This is the period anti-science people claim has no warming. The data shows pretty clearly the warming has continued unabated.This is a true indicator that the anti-science crowd has something wrong with the way they think.

Yes, it's true. NOAA announced this week that January was not only the hottest January ever recorded, but it was one of only two months to exceed the long-term average by more than a full degree Celsius.

Note: NASA GISS has the last four months over the one degree mark and has January as the month with the largest ever departure from average.


For the last 12 months, the tally is:

January 2016 was the hottest January ever recorded;

December 2015 was the hottest December ever recorded;

November 2015 was the hottest November ever recorded;

October 2015 was the hottest October ever recorded;

September 2015 was the hottest September ever recorded; 

August 2015 was the hottest August ever recorded;

July 2015 was the hottest July (and hottest any month) ever recorded;

June 2015 was the hottest June ever recorded;

May 2015 was the hottest May ever recorded;

April 2015 was tied for the third hottest April ever recorded;

March 2015 was the hottest March ever recorded;

February 2015 was the hottest February ever recorded.

Adding up the score for the last 12 months gives us: one 3rd hottest month and eleven hottest months ever.