Consistently Warm Again! August Was World's Sixth Hottest

Almost the entire world except the eastern Pacific
Ocean had a hot summer, 2022, according to NOAA data.

 Yep, the world had another super warm month in August, confirms federal climate officials. 

August, 2022 was the sixth hottest on record for the globe, says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. For more than a year now, pretty much every month has ranged from fifth to seventh hottest on record. 

This of course, isn't a surprise, since record heat waves were in the news all month. 

NOAA releases the previous month's climate data, usually at midmonth. The August report came out on Wednesday. 

To summarize what's been going on, we're in an incredibly persistent El Nina weather pattern. In this pattern, the eastern Pacific Ocean cools markedly.  This has the effect of cooling the entire world, on average anyway, a bit. 

This is why it's been a few years since the world has had a record warm month. But the fact that we're consistently scoring in the top ten warmest list month after month during an El Nina is disconcerting.   

The opposite weather pattern, El Nino, tends to warm the planet as a whole beyond what you'd expect. El Ninos also tend to contribute to extreme weather events. When we get into an El Nino, it will get scary. The cooler La Nina pattern is expected to continue for at least a few more months. 

But, if things get even hotter and more extreme during the inevitable El Nino, this could get really nasty really fast. 

August was the final month of climatological summer in the northern hemisphere, and what a summer it has been! North America and Europe had their hottest August on record, and Asia's August was fourth warmest.

The reason why this August wasn't the world's hottest on record is because South America, Africa and Oceania had warmer than normal Augusts, but didn't score in the top ten hottest. 

The hottest spots, relative to average in August were in most of Europe, western North America, the northeastern United States, eastern Canada and central and eastern Asia. 

The coolest spots, which weren't all that cool, were the eastern Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America, due to La Nina, and south-central Russia, central Australia and northeastern Brazil.

For the summer as a whole, June 1 through August 31, this year was the world's fifth hottest. All of the top five hottest summers for the globe as a whole have occurred since 2015.

Here in the contiguous United States, we had our eighth hottest August and third hottest summer on record in 2022. Interestingly, nights were particularly warm.  Both July and August had the warmest average daily minimum temperature on record. 

Eight states, including all of New England except Vermont and Maine, had their hottest Augusts on record. Vermont's August was "merely" the third hottest on record.