Earth’s 16-month record heat streak ends

WASHINGTON — Earth’s 16-month sizzling streak of record high temperatures is finally over, say a group of federal meteorologists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said last month’s 15.9°C average was merely the second hottest September on record for the globe. That is ever so slightly cooler — a few hundredths of a degree — than the record set last year. But it was quite a bit warmer — 0.9°C —than the 20th-century average.

Global average temperatures include both land and sea surface readings. And while oceans were cooling off a tad, global land temperatures in September still set a record high, said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden. It was an unusually hot month in much of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.

However, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), which averages global temperatures differently, considers last month the record. But the space agency did not have a big consecutive hot streak going because it did not consider last June’s temperatures a record.

“It’s kind of nice to see it cool down a little bit even though it will go back up again,” said Dr Blunden. “It may not be a record now because we have natural variations in weather and climate. There’s always going to be ups and downs, but that doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening.”

The fact that the world came close to setting another heat record despite the end of El Nino — a warming of the central Pacific that tends to spike global temperatures — “is quite a feat and offers evidence that global climate change is contributing to these monthly records or near records”, said University of Oklahoma meteorology Professor Jason Furtado in an email.

The end of El Nino will “just give us a brief respite, since the global trend will continue mercilessly until we stop it by getting off fossil fuels”, said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany.

Burning coal, oil and gas puts heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air, a main contributor to climate change.

For all that, Dr Blunden said this year is still on course to be the hottest on record, beating the mark set in 2014 and then broken last year.

Meteorologists said three record hot years in a row would be unprecedented.

Through September, this year is 1.6 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average and nearly a quarter of a degree warmer than the first nine months of last year. The records go back to 1880. AP