Last year set a rather notable record for the warmest global temperatures, as a strong El Niño bumped up a steady trend of greenhouse warming to push the temperatures well above the previous record. Our report on the temperature record, however, noted that it was likely to be short lived. The El Niño that drove it wasn't going to switch off at the end of the calendar year, and additional time would allow the heat it was pushing into the atmosphere to spread more widely across the globe. As a result, some observers were predicting that 2016 would be even hotter.
So far, those predictions seem to be spot on. Over the weekend, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies released its figures for the month of February, which registered as a startling 1.35°C above the baseline period (1951-1980). The previous monthly record had been 1.14°C; last year's annual record was a paltry 0.84°C.
(credit: NASA-GiSS via Gavin Schmidt)
The graph above shows data from a period that contains all of the 15 warmest years in the instrumental record. The February reading, at the far right, provides some indication on how much of a radical departure this warming is.
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