Last month world’s hottest recorded

JULY was the hottest month ever recorded globally.

While South Africans will remember shivering in winds blowing off snowy mountains, temperature statistics published by Nasa, by the Japan Meteorological Agency and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US show that the average global land and ocean temperature for July was the hottest for any month since record keeping began in 1880.

NOAA said both the average temperature of the ocean and of the land in July were the hottest ever recorded.

The global temperature of the land last month was 0.96°C above the 20th century average, while that of the sea was 0.75°C above the 20th century average.

The combined temperature of the land and sea was 0.81°C above the 20th century average. And the first seven months of this year have also been an alltime record high for the planet.

Nasa reports that in Africa, the average temperature for the continent for last month was the second highest on record, the hottest being in 2002.

The agency reports “record warmth” for July across much of northern South America, parts of southern Europe and the western US. Last year was the hottest year on record so far.

The effects of global warming – caused mainly by our fossil fuel economy – are being measured in other ways, such as melting glaciers. NOAA said the average Arctic Sea ice extent in July last year was 9.5 percent below the 1981 to 2010 average. Records for Arctic Sea ice extent began in 1979.

Nasa reports that Greenland lost between 150 and 250 cubic kilometres of ice a year between 2002 and 2006, while the Antarctic lost 152 cubic kilometres between 2002 and 2005.

The increased carbon dioxide emissions have had other effects, such as increasing the acidity of the oceans.

Nasa reports that since the start of the Industrial Revolution, which marked the start of the sharp increase in carbon emissions resulting from human activity, the acidity of the surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent, as the oceans absorb increasing amounts of carbon from the air.

Nasa says the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the world’s oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons a year.

Sea levels rose about 17cm last century, but the rate in the past decade was nearly double that of the last century.

Nasa says global warming is responsible for sea-level rise in two ways: first because warmer air temperatures mean an increase in the rate of glaciers melting, and second, because the ocean is absorbing most of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases, and warmer seas take up more space than colder seas.

Some oceans get more heat than others, which can lead to changes in ocean currents.

So far, this is the warmest year ever for planet