2016 is well on course to be the hottest year on record

April 2016 was the seventh month in a row to break global temperature records.

It might not have felt like it in Ireland, but according to figures released by NASA over the weekend, April 2016 was the hottest April on record and 2016 is well on course to be the hottest year on record. By some distance. https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/731599988141248512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw NASA figures showed that the the global temperature of land and sea in April 2016 was 1.11C warmer than the average temperature for the month during the period 1951-1980. https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/731840429352730625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw It is the third time that the record for April has been broken since 2007 and the seventh month in a row to break global temperature records. The release of similar figures in February prompted scientists to talk about what was called a “climate emergency”. Commenting on the rise in temperatures, Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales in Australia is quoted in The Guardian as saying: “The interesting thing is the scale at which we’re breaking records. It’s clearly all heading in the wrong direction. “Climate scientists have been warning about this since at least the 1980s,” Pitman added. “And it’s been bloody obvious since the 2000s. So where’s the surprise?”