NASA released data last Monday indicating that the recent streak of monthly global temperature records has continued, with July 2016 being the hottest month since the modern temperature record commenced in 1880. Each month in 2016 has now been the hottest on record—in fact each of the last fifteen months running have now seen record maximum temperatures. The first seven months of 2016 averaged 1.3^oC warmer than at the start of the record in the late nineteenth century. Arctic sea ice monitoring shows it at lowest recorded coverage for five out of the first six months of the year. 2016 is almost certainly on the way to being the hottest year on record.

It is now just seven months since announcement of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. That agreement supposedly paves the way for keeping global temperature increase during this century ‘well below’ 2^oC, with hopes even of a more ambitious restriction to 1.5^oC. This is viewed—rather arbitrarily—as the threshold for a relatively ‘safe’ global climate. In light of the current warming trend though, that mitigation task, regarded only last December as achievable by signatories to the Paris Agreement, seems already to have slipped from reach. Continue reading →