July is Set to Become the Hottest Month Ever

Some climate scientists are saying that July 2019 will go on record as having the highest global average temperature ever recorded for a calendar month. Of course this ignores all of the months of human history in which the global average climate was not recorded, which is almost all of them. It also ignores the reality that our ability and methods to measure the global average temperature have gotten significantly better over the last hundred years or so. But it is true that over the past several years the global surface temperature of the earth has increased. The reasons are the subject of much argument.

July is on track to become the hottest month in recorded history, climate scientists say, after heat waves blanketed North America and the Arctic saw warmer than usual temperatures. It’s the latest sign that the planet’s overall climate is warming, and that human activities are causing extreme events such as heat waves to become more likely and more intense, the scientists say.

Even with more than a week left until the end of the month, dozens of experts are already anticipating that the current record from July 2017 will fall.

“It's looking like there's a strong likelihood that we will end up with the warmest month ever,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. (In this case, "ever" means since modern record-keeping began in 1880.)

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