New NASA Temps: “Last Month was special.”
March 12, 2016
Update, March 12, 2016: Data released Saturday from NASA confim that February 2016 was not only the warmest month ever measured globally, at 1.35 degrees Celsius above the long-term average—it was more than 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the previously most unusually warm month ever measured: January 2016. The new NASA data confirms unofficial data released earlier this month showing a dramatic and ongoing surge in the planet’s temperature—if anything, that data, upon which the previous versions of this post were based, were an underestimate. On Twitter, Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which maintains the NASA temperature database, noted that February’s temperature record was “special” and commented simply: “Wow.”
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
March 12, 2016 at 5:52 pm
No doubt the result of a strong El Nino, but the question remains, how much energy is stored in the oceans to keep rising the bar? And will it escape as fast as it builds up? These are interesting times.
March 12, 2016 at 7:04 pm
Wow indeed.
This is more than anyone could have imagined even with an El Niño.
This should be front page news.
March 12, 2016 at 7:38 pm
Indeed these are interesting times. The statistics give much kudos to Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, who stepped forward and predicted the release of Ocean heat and temperature rise a few years ago, taking into account the PDO state observations and combination with El Nino.
The Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”, has not been found in any Chinese literature, the nearest to it comes from a 1627 collection of short stories entitled “Stories to Awaken the World.”
February 2016’s NASA GISS statistics and later this month the release of the Japanese (JMA) monthly observations should hopefully awaken the World, and I hope very much it will awaken the U.S voters for their next president.
March 12, 2016 at 10:47 pm
Tsk, you have to understand the denier mind. If this spike is an El Nino-driven acceleration, then we can look forward to the following few years showing yet another “pause”. Problem solved, nothing to see here, move along folks.
March 13, 2016 at 2:51 am
Tipping points have been triggered and we are increasingly moving along the curved and nearly vertical part of this particular scythe (no longer a hockey stick). There may be no pause coming. And if there is, it’s almost certain t be a pause at a considerably higher level than the last one–in other words, not a pause but another in a series of steps. Psychotic psychopaths will no doubt continue to lie about this, and should be treated with compassion and recommendations to seek therapy. Or maybe just smacked down verbally and banned from all the sites possible. Maybe all of the above.
March 13, 2016 at 3:30 am
Sometimes human language fails to conceptualize the point we have reached. We have certainly started a powerful ball rolling. The statistics show it clearly. We have past many posts and the future is indeed changed.
Where we go from here in 2016 is entirely in our hands, reading the everyday news, the future doesn’t bode well. Time to evolve folks and quickly please.
March 13, 2016 at 9:31 am
Not at all sure it’s ‘entirely in our hands’; many now have little choice but to run for the border or the hills, and there’s no guarantee that most of us will have anywhere to run. We are the asteroid, and the dinosaurs.
March 13, 2016 at 2:53 pm
‘Time to evolve’?
I think we already did that. To me, it’s obvious: homo fatuus brutus is in total control. Or, rather, out of control, while believing the opposite.
March 13, 2016 at 3:44 am
What does it look like when we compare previous El Ninos specifically?
March 13, 2016 at 10:15 am
March 13, 2016 at 8:53 am
[…] The new global temperature graphs from this week are causing gasps across the scientific community. I’m reposting here my 2014 interviews with Kevin Trenberth and Gerald Meehl, who both spoke about the possibility of a “step change” in global temperatures, somehow initiated by large El Nino events, such as what we saw in 1998, and this year. […]
June 23, 2016 at 2:55 am
[…] Air, land and ocean temperatures are rising, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased this year more than before, every pattern seems not only to be changing but also doing it drastically. But the planet has gone through many profound and fast climate changes in the past, the difference is that this time we are living on it and we have to face its direct consequences and the social impacts they will have on or human systems. […]