Washington:
An analysis by NASA has found that August 2016 is the warmest month in 136 years of modern record-keeping. With this, it continues a streak of 11 consecutive months dating back to October 2015 which broke high-temperature records, said NASA.
Although, the peak time of the seasonal temperature cycle is July, August 2016 wound up tied with July 2016 for the warmest month ever recorded.
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in the US conducted a monthly analysis of global temperatures. According to the analysis, last month’s temperature was 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest August in 2014.
Last month was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the August temperature from 1951-1980.
“Monthly rankings, which vary by only a few hundredths of a degree, are inherently fragile,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.
“We stress that the long-term trends are the most important for understanding the ongoing changes that are affecting our planet,” said Schmidt.
The GISS team uses publicly available data acquired by about 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research stations and assemble it to prepare the monthly analysis.
The monthly analysis by the GISS team is assembled from publicly available data acquired by about 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research stations.
The modern global temperature record began around 1880 because previous observations did not cover enough of the planet.
(With inputs from PTI)
