Thanks to the ocean warming effects of El Niño and the global warming effects of humans in general, planet Earth just experienced its warmest June on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports today. The extremely warm June marks 14 straight months of record-breaking warmth, and the longest hot streak on record.
"Warmer to much-warmer-than-average conditions dominated across much of the globe's surface, resulting in the highest temperature departure for June since global temperature records began in 1880," NOAA wrote in its June Global Analysis report. On the other hand, the agency noted that the warm streak could be broken at least temporarily when El Niño eventually gives way to La Niña and the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean cool a bit. While El Niño has also been blamed for symbolically high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, it's not the only cause of these high temperatures.
"While the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific this winter gave a boost to global temperatures from October onwards, it is the underlying trend which is producing these record numbers," NASA's director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin Schmidt said in a statement. In its own study, NASA also found that sea ice in the arctic had hit its lowest point since the 1970s and 80s. While this obviously poses problems for wildlife in the region, NASA researchers believe this could also be affecting the way the Earth itself moves.
