It Was the World's FIfth Hottest June

World had its fifth hottest June. Land masses

had the hottest June, but La Nina cooled the

oceans just a bit, especially in the eastern Pacific,

which lead to June being fifth hottest.

 With all the headlines you've seen here and everywhere else, you'd think the world had its hottest June on record. 

Nope, but it was definitely up there.

NOAA's  National Centers for Environmental Information just put out its monthly snapshot report on the globe, and tells us that it was the world's fifth hottest June. All of the top 10 warmest Junes have been since 2010, says NCEI.

A big factor that kept it from being Number 1 were the oceans. The effects of La Nina cooled those waters off. But just a bit. Ocean waters on average tend to be a little cooler than during the opposite El Nino, especially in the eastern Pacific Ocean. 

The world's land masses, where everybody actually lives, turned to have their hottest Junes on record. This of course was led by the toasty Northern Hemisphere, especially North America, which as we previously noted suffered their hottest June on record. 

Africa as a whole also had its hottest June on record, besting the record for the continent set just last year. Europe and Asia had their second hottest June on record.

The only relatively cool places, relative to average, were India, western Russia and parts of eastern Europe and a piece of western Australia. 

For those keeping track, last month was the 45th consecutive June and 438th consecutive month with temperatures at least a little above the 20th century average. 

See a trend? Global temperatures relative

to the 20th century average for June'

since the 1880s.,

Now that half the year is done, 2021 so far is the eight warmest on record, and very likely to be another year scoring in the Top 10.  The La Nina cycle, which I mentioned above, is keeping this year just under the torrid, hottest pace the world saw in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Though La Nina is forecast to reassert itself a bit, that's not nearly enough to offset the effects of climate change,. Eventually, an El Nino will return, which tends to make the world a little hotter, all other things being equal.

But, with climate change roaring on, an El Nino will probably have us set new record global high temperatures, almost certainly within this decade. All the weather extremes associated with climate change will of course follow suit, much to the detriment of us humans who continue to pump all those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.