Shocker - August anomaly 0.98 C

Sou

From the HotWhopper article:

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for August was 0.98 °C, which is 0.16 °C higher than the previous hottest August in 2014.

Because July is the hottest month of the year, I've seen this July reported as the hottest month ever in recorded history! I asked the question whether August beat July and was told it's too close to call.

The average for the eight months to the end of August is 1.05 °C, which is 0.25 °C higher than any previous January to August period. The previous highest was last year, which with the latest data had an anomaly of 0.8 °C.

There are now eleven in a row of "hottest months" from October 2015 to August 2016 (that is, hottest October, hottest November etc). If we could look back over the entire Holocene, it's probably more than 7,000 years since there was a similar run of hottest months on record, that is, not since the Holocene climatic optimum (it's probably hotter now than it was back then).

And a couple of charts. The first is a progressive average - Each year shows the average from January that year to the month on the horizontal axis.

This next one compares 2015/16 with past strong-ish El Ninos that were immediately followed by a La Nina. You can see the difference this year where August temperatures kicked up instead of dropping. (NOAA has just taken off the La Nina watch. BoM will issue it's fortnightly ENSO update later today.)