The climate did it again, with February winning a new record as the hottest consecutive month.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data Thursday that showed February was the 10th month in the row that beat temperature records.
“Overall, the six highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred in the past six months,” the agency reported Thursday. “February 2016 also marks the 10th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken.”
“This not only was the highest for February in the 1880–2016 record — surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.33°C / 0.59°F — but it surpassed the all-time monthly record set just two months ago in December 2015 by 0.09°C (0.16°F),” the agency said.
The report was issued one day after the House science panel chairman rebuked the agency’s temperature reports as misleading and inaccurate. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said at a hearing Wednesday on NOAA’s budget that the temperature increases have been reported to justify President Obama’s climate change agenda, purposely ignoring satellite data that tells a different story.
But the Thursday report doesn’t say anything about manmade climate change being the culprit for the record-setting heat. It is more focused on the El Niño weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which is caused by sustained high pressure over the ocean disturbing normal weather patterns.
“Strong El Niño conditions were still present across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean during February 2016, as evidenced by continued record warmth across much of this region, but temperatures were beginning to decrease from their highs near the end of 2015,” the agency report said.
The agency notes in its country-by-country data that “February was not mild everywhere.” Iceland was one of those places.
“All official reporting stations across Iceland observed below-average temperatures for the month,” the temperature report said. “The capital city of Reykjavik had a February temperature that was 0.9°C (1.6°F) colder than its 1961–1990 average and 1.9°C (3.4°F) colder than the average over the past 10 years, marking its coldest February since 2002.”
