Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has announced that September 2016 was the warmest September ever recorded around the globe.
Although statistically tied with September 2014, September 2016 was 0.004° C warmer than the previous record, and 0.91°C warmer than the mean September temperature from 1951-1980.
This result means that 11 of the last 12 months since October 2015 have set new monthly high temperature records.
Although at the time announced as the hottest June on record, June 2016 has been relegated to the third-warmest June as the result of new data becoming available, lowering the June temperature anomaly by 0.05° to 0.75° C
“Monthly rankings are sensitive to updates in the record, and our latest update to mid-winter readings from the South Pole has changed the ranking for June.” said the GISS director, Gavin Schmidt. “We continue to stress that while monthly rankings are newsworthy, they are not nearly as important as long-term trends.”
Monthly analysis data used by the GISS team is collated from more than 6300 meteorological stations around the world, Antarctic research stations, and ship and buoy based instruments measuring sea surface temperatures. Data can take some time to be processed and returned from different sources, which can result in changes to monthly averages.
The directly measured global temperature record begins around 1880, when record-keeping became sufficiently widespread to construct a global average.
More:
September 2016 was Warmest on Record by Narrow Margin – NASA, October 16, 2016
September 2016 has been confirmed as the warmest September on record by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, joining 11 of the last 12 months in setting monthly records.
