The following post is by Joe Romm at Think Progress:
NASA reports this was the hottest July on record. So we are now in “bet the mortgage” territory that 2015 will be the hottest year in NASA’s 125-year temperature record.
In fact, 2015 is likely to crush the previous record — 2014 — probably by a wide margin, especially since one of the strongest El Niños in 50 years is adding to the strong underlying global warming trend.
Climate expert Dr. John Abraham updated this NASA chart to show how the first seven months of 2015 compares to the annual temperatures of previous years:
The gap between 2015 and all other years in that chart will grow since NOAA and many others project the current El Niño will keep growing stronger for many months. The soaring ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which are characteristic of an El Niño, just keep climbing.
As the journal Nature reports, this El Niño “could be [the] strongest on record.” It is projected to peak in the winter and last into the spring of 2016.
If the 2015-2016 El Niño does rival the 1997-1998 super El Niño, then just as 1998 crushed 1997 temperatures, we may see 2016 beat all the records set in 2015.
Bottom Line: the warming trend that made 2014 the hottest calendar year on record is continuing. We appear to be in the midst of of the long-awaited jump in global temperatures.
And being in California and having some experience with rainfall-temperature correlations, the apparent effect of global warming on rainfall is every more terrifying. Of course, in a warmer world, there will be more overall rainfall. It will just be over the oceans where we don't need it.
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