At Midway Point, 2017 Is 2nd-Hottest Year on Record

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/midway-point-2017-2nd-hottest-year-21625

By Andrea Thompson
July 18, 2017

At the halfway point of the year, 2017 remains the second-hottest year to date — a surprise given the demise of the El Niño that helped boost temperatures to record levels last year.

The continued near-record warmth is a marker of just how much global temperatures have risen thanks to the greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere from fossil fuel use.

“Personally, I wasn't expecting it to be as warm as it has been,” Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist, said in an email. “After the decline of the strong El Niño I was expecting the values to drop a bit and rank among the top five warmest years. This year has been extremely remarkable.”

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Every month of the year so far, including June, has ranked in the top three hottest for that month. Overall, the first six months of the year were 1.64°F (0.91°C) above the 20th century average of 56.3°F (13.5°C), according to NOAA. They were 0.29°F (0.16°C) behind the same period in 2016, which turned out to be hottest year on record, but ahead of 2015 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).

According to NASA, the first six months were 1.64°F above the 1951-1980 average.

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While there were several spots that have seen record-warm years so far — including Mexico, parts of eastern Russia and China and western Europe — the heat is fairly broadly spread around the globe.

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In fact, years with La Niñas (which tend to cool global temperatures) are today warmer than El Niño years several decades ago. 2017 actually started out with a La Niña, albeit a weak one, but it is 0.38°F (0.21°C) ahead of 1998, Sanchez-Lugo, said.

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