Hot Times Go On: Worldwide, May Was Hottest, Or At Least Tied For It

Extreme warmth, relative to average, in Siberia was a big contributor to
make May, 2020 the warmest on record for the globe. Eastern North
America was one of the few coolish spots. 

Last week, the numbers came out on how the world fared climate wise in May.

To almost nobody's surprise, we're #1 again.

May was the hottest on record for the world as a whole, according to several monitoring agencies, including NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information.

It's been a hot decade, too.  Each of the seven warmest Mays have occured in the past seven year, according to NCEI.

Siberia basically pushed the world over the top in terms of May heat.  Relative to average, that part of the world was off the charts warm.

The only relatively cool spots were eastern Canada, eastern United States, Australia and parts of eastern Europe.

If anything, the trend in global warming has accelerated in the past several year. Each of the past 12 months have either been the hottest or second hottest on record on a global basis.

According to Jeff Masters, writing for Yale Climate Connection:

"The year-to-date period January-May ranks as the second warmest such period on record, just 0.06 (degrees Celcius) behind the record set in 2016.  According to NCEI's annual temperature outlook, the year 2020 has more than a 99.9 percent chance to rank among the five warmest years on record, and a 49 percent chance of being the warmest year on record. If so, calendar 2020 would mean each of the past seven years would be among the seven warmest on record."

As noted last month, global economic lockdowns to slow the spread of the coronavirus will probably reduce carbon emissions by 5 to 8 percent from the record highs of 2019. Even with that reduction, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow.

Plus, the coronavirus crisis might only last another year or two.  That's way too long for us humans, who hate to see these tragc deaths and illnesses from the virus. In the grand scheme of things, though, the coronovirus problems won't last long enough to cause any dent at all in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

According to USA Today, Kennth Gillingham, a climate economist at Yale University was pretty clear on this, saying, "The only reason emissions dropped is that we're all stuck at home....As soon as the lockdowns lift, they are likely to rise again."

For those of you keeping track, May, 2020 was the 425th consecutive month with above normal global temperatuires.