June, 2014 Was World's Hottest, Says Climate Data Center

Lots of red on this global map depicting
the world's hottest June on record.  

To the surprise of few climate scientists, the combined ocean and land temperature on Earth during June, 2014 was the hottest on record,  the National Climatic Data Center announced this morning.    

The combined land and sea temperature was 0.72 degrees above the 20th century average. That doesn't sound like much to those of us who can easily tell the difference between 50 and 60 degrees.

But worldwide climate records involve small numbers, and this warm departure from normal makes June the hottest month globally since they started really keeping track of this stuff in the late 1800s.

If you count just land areas, June was the 7th warmest on record. The oceans were the hottest on record, of course.

The first six months of 2014 were tied for the third hottest on record for the world as a whole.

The last cooler than normal June for the world was in 1976. The last time any month of the year was cooler than average on a global basis was February, 1985.

Basically if you're 29 years old or younger, you've never experienced a month where the Earth has a whole was cooler than average. (Though of course there were a few individual months where you live that were locally colder than normal. If you lived in the Upper Midwest or Northeastern U.S. in January or March, you know what I mean.)

If trends continue, 2014 might actually turn out to be the hottest year on record on a global basis.

The latest global report comes on the heels of a NOAA assessment of 2013 that revealed little if any good news on the global warming front.

Last year was somewhere between the second and sixth warmest year for the world, depending upon who you asked. (Different sets of data yielded slightly different results)

The 2013 assessment also said carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise, sea levels were still slowly but steadily rising, and Arctic ice extent stayed at low levels.

With the last several months being at or near the top warmest on record, I'd love to see how the global warming denialists spin THIS latest report.

Maybe they'll say the fine folks at the National Climatic Data Center are part of a huge conspiracy to somehow tell us it's hot so they can take our guns and liberty away.  Or something.

I'm not sure how saying the world is warming will take our guns and liberty away, but I'm sure some of the denialists will come up with something.

Here's something the denialists don't understand: If there is some huge conspiracy that hundreds or thousands of people are in on, you're going to get a few loudmouths, or ethical people, or people who don't want to break laws, to whistleblow.  And if that happened, the media, including me, would Eat. It. Up.

Gleefully.

But all I hear is crickets, and the rustle of aluminum foil hats on the heads of the most extreme denialists.