El Niño + climate change = heat records

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Climate change combined with this year’s El Niño set a new world record for worldwide heat on Tuesday – 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit or 17.18 degrees Celsius.

The low 60s may not sound that hot to anyone sweating through a summer heat wave, but the figure is almost a full degree Celsius above the average between 1979 and 2000 and represents a new indicator that Earth’s climate is heating up faster than anticipated.

Looking at the graphic in CNN’s report that tracks annual global temperatures, the hottest part of the year has not arrived. Expect more worldwide records before the fall.

The record was first set on Monday, when the average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 degrees Fahrenheit), per the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s data.

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which also tracks global temperatures using a different method, tweeted that Monday was a record in its data set, with a global temperature of 16.88 degrees Celsius.

The climate science consensus that world governments should seek to contain rising temperatures to within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels seems more and more unattainable.

The World Meteorological Organization, the Switzerland-based agency of the United Nations, said back in May that there is a two-thirds likelihood that temperatures would shoot past that 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold within the next five years.

The cyclical phenomenon occurs when warm Pacific waters flow toward the west coast of the Americas and affect temperatures worldwide. The WMO declared the onset of an El Niño Tuesday and warned governments to prepare for more extreme weather events as a result.

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