April Was World's Fifth Hottest, Continuing A Consistent Trend

Most of the world was once again warmer than the average
of all the years since 1880. Only the eastern Pacfic
and northwestern North America were on the cool side. 

As I wrote a month ago, it seems like on a global basis, every month for at least the past year or so has been around the fifth hottest on record.  

Add April, 2022 to that list. The month tied with 2010 as the fifth hottest on record, says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. 

So, we'll do the same thing we' e done every month, with this slightly updated sentence, taking into account April's global temperature, and quote this familiar sounding sentence from the April report: 

"The 1 warmest April months have occurred since 2010, with the years 2014-2022 all ranking among the 10 warmest Aprils on record. This marked the 46th consecutive April and the 448th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average."

As always, there were a few small cold pockets in a world of heat. 

North America did manage to have its chilliest April since 2018, which isn't really saying all that much. That was driven by persistent chill in southern Canada and the northern United States west of the Great Lakes. 

The only other notable cool spot, at least relative to the rest of the world, was the eastern Pacific Ocean.

That was a sign that the La Nina pattern is still going full throttle. La Nina is a periodic cooling of swaths of the Pacific Ocean. This normally has a slight cooling effect on the world's temperature as a whole.

But as we've seen over the past year, this "cooling" pressure is preventing individual months from being the hottest on record. But we're still scoring in the top 10 each month.  This is all an ominous sign for when we someday finally flip over to an El Nino, which warms both the eastern Pacific Ocean and the world in general. 

A record setting warm month would likely really set off some dangerous, extreme weather events across the globe. As if we're not having enough of them already. 

Every April temperature for the world as a whole, 
the departure from normal, since 1880. See a trend?

La Nina is forecast to last for several more months at least. That's bad news if you don't like hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico threatening the U.S. coastline. 

La Nina tends to encourage Atlantic hurricanes. It's a big reason why we've had such busy hurricane seasons yearly since 2017. This year is looking bad, too.

Pretty much all the hurricane forecasters are calling for a busy Atlantic hurricane season. The only question is how many of these storms end up hitting the coast. 

The first four months of the year, taken together, are also the fifth warmest on record. Given the ongoing La Nina the year at this point "only" has a 27.8 percent chance of being among the five hottest on record. It's pretty much a lock already for being among the 10 warmest. 

In April, no nation or territory established an all time record high temperature,. That's to be expected, since April is the middle of spring or autumn, depending upon which hemisphere you're in. Obviously, national heat records would be established in the summer. 

However, so far this year, three nations - Paraguay, Uruguay and Australia - have established or tied national heat records.