NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has published its monthly “State of the Climate Report.”
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for May, March-May (Northern Hemisphere spring-Southern Hemisphere autumn), and the period January-May.
The warming in May is greatest precisely where climate science suggested it would be – the high northern latitudes (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?” – precisely the worst possible place from the perspective of amplifying feedbacks (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“):
And it bears repeating, the record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It’s just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.
Finally, the Arctic sea ice extent continues to break records itself, as data from both the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) make clear:
Will we break records for the whole year?
In Arctic sea ice extent, maybe – see NSIDC director Serreze says, “I think it’s quite possible” we could “break another record this year”). In global temperature, probably (absent a deep La Niña developing soon) – see NASA: The 12-month running mean global temperature has reached a new record in 2010 – despite recent minimum of solar irradiance. And in Arctic sea ice volume, almost certainly – see Arctic death spiral: Naval Postgrad School’s Maslowski “projects ice-free* fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs)”.
