‘The Cause for Alarm’: May 2016 Was Earth’s Hottest Month Ever

The agency revealed that May temperatures were, on average, 0.93°C higher, compared to averages between 1951-1980. May has become the 13th month in a row to break high temperature records, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

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In Finland, the temperature was about five degrees higher than usually observed across most of the country, the Finnish Meteorological Institute reported.

Alaska witnessed its hottest spring on record, and half of Australia saw the warmest fall ever recorded.

“The state of the climate so far this year gives us much cause for alarm,” said David Carlson, director of Geneva’s World Climate Research Programme, in a release from the World Meteorological Association.

Carlson said that the 2016 Super El Nino is partially responsible for the temperature records, but only “partly,” as global warming, conditioned by the man-made greenhouse effect that is a result of burning fossil fuels, is “the new normal.”

Noting the direct results of global warming due to climate change, including increasingly violent storm systems and “widespread and severe” coral reef bleaching, US scientists are predicting that 2016 will be the hottest year in 136 years of record keeping, topping previous highs in 2014 and 2015.