Hot enough for ya?
But seriously. The unusual heat of April this year wasn’t just unusual – it was record-breaking. As was the past six months before that, actually. NASA figures suggest that the land and sea temperatures in April were 1.11C warmer than the average temperature between 1951 – 1980. That’s in the ballpark of what scientists might call a ‘climate emergency’.
This means that 2016 is almost certainly going to be the hottest year on record, probably by quite a wide margin too. Skeptics might say that this is caused by a massive El Niño – a warm blast of air across the Pacific. While they’re right that there is a big El Niño, it’s not even close to the biggest we’ve seen.
The April figures look even scarier when taken in conjunction with both the mass coral bleaching up on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as the revelation that we’ve passed a carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million. The latter is symbolic, but worth reflecting on. Especially because we might not see it go below again in our lifetimes.
So there have it. A hot month, a hot year, a hot lifetime. Maybe we should… do something about it. Just a thought.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images / Zak Kaczmarek
