New data released by NASA reveals April was the seventh straight month that broke global temperature records.
In fact, last month surpassed the previous April record by the biggest-ever margin, .43 degrees F, the third straight month this has happened.
“The very unfortunate circumstance we have now is the overlap of a very intense El Nino that has been magnified by climate change,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told BBC News. “All of these record breaking temperatures and attendant implications that we have had, such as record breaking fires for example, and droughts in India are all reminders that we cannot afford to do anything except to accelerate the solution agenda – we absolutely have no other option but to accelerate.”
What’s causing temperatures to rise?
The record-breaking temperatures are being driven, in part, by an enormous El Niño, which is a pool of warm water spanning across the Pacific Ocean. However, it’s not the largest El Niño on record and this year’s surge in temperatures is happening over a recent history of global warming, driving temperatures to all-time highs.
Andy Pitman, a climate science director at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told The Guardian the international goal in Paris of keeping warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) warming is in doubt given the temperatures being posted this year.
“The 1.5 degree C target, it’s wishful thinking,” Pitman said. “I don’t know if you’d get 1.5 degrees C if you stopped emissions today. There’s inertia in the system. It’s putting intense pressure on 2 degrees C.”
The April datasets were released as the symbolic milestone of carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million have been surpassed at a crucial measuring station in Tasmania, Australia known as Cape Grim.
“The thing that’s causing that warming, is going up and up and up,” Pitman said. “So the cool ocean temperatures we will get with a La Niña are warmer than we’d ever seen more than a few decades ago.”
He noted that these temperature swings will decimate sensitive coral reef ecosystems near his native Australia.
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Image credit: NASA
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