Last month was the warmest July in 136 years of record keeping, and puts 2016 on track to be the warmest year on record, says NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And the NASA institute says that, because seasonal temperatures are highest in July, the peak of summer, “it means that July also was warmer than any other month on record.”
“It wasn’t by the widest of margins, but July 2016 was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt in a statement. According to GISS, this July’s temperature was 0.1-degree celsius warmer than July of 2015, 2011 and 2009. July was the 10th month in a row to set a monthly high-temperature record.
The analysis was based on data from 6,300 weather stations around the world. Modern record keeping began around 1880, NASA says, “because previous observations didn’t cover enough of the planet.”