Monthly Global Climate Report For April Has Some Ominous Signs

Berkeley Earth's temperature map of the world in
April, showing where it was warm or cold relative
to the 1951 to 1980 average. 

 As we do every four weeks or so, we've checked in with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information for the previous month's global climate summary. 

The report for April has some ominous signs. 

For the world as a whole, April was the fourth warmest on record.  That's in line with most months over the past year, in which we score in the top five warmest, but don't quite make it to hottest.  

That's probably a lingering effect of the La Nina pattern that brought a few years of cooler than normal waters to the eastern Pacific.

That, in turn, kept global temperatures from rising as fast as they might otherwise would have. 

But, now, we're transitioning to the opposite EL Nino pattern, which tends to boost global temperatures. Combine an El Nino with climate change, and you can really make things toasty fast. Which for course is dangerous if you don't like deadly heat waves, droughts in some areas and torrential floods and others.

The April report from NCEI gave hints that we might be starting to feel the effects of El Nino.

The Southern Hemisphere had its hottest April on record. In fact, in that hemisphere, it was the warmest month of any on record, period. 

But the real trouble sign is in the water. As a whole, the world's oceans were the warmest on record for  April. 

Warm water is a reservoir that can transfer additional heat to the atmosphere, further destabilizing the climate. And never mind how record high ocean temperatures can really do a number on marine ecosystems and fisheries. 

In April, the warmest spots, relative to average, were in northeastern Canada, the northeastern United States, Antarctica, eastern and southwestern Europe, western South America and parts of Southeast Asia.

The only coolish spots were a patch of the Pacific Ocean between Antarctica and the southern tip of South America, Alaska, northwestern Asia and western Australia. 

By the way, about 3.4 percent of the Earth's surface had its warmest April on record, according to Berkeley Earth.  That doesn't sound like much, but that's a lot of real estate and ocean surface to have a warmest month on record. By the way, Burlington, Vermont is included in that 3.4 percent with a record warm April. 

At the moment, Berkeley Earth is giving roughly even 50/50 odds that 2023 will be the world's warmest on record, as they expect to see El Nino's temperature boost become more apparent in the second half of this year.  

There's a famous United Nations goal of keeping global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  With El Nino about to give world temperatures a boost, the World Meteorological Organization is predicting that sometimes within the next five years, chances are we'll at least briefly go above that 1.5 degree threshold. 

The WMO is also pretty much guaranteeing that the next five years will be the warmest on record for the Earth, if you look at data since 1850. 

A more permanent shift toward global temperatures above the 1.5 degree threshold are expected in the 2030s, which really isn't all that far off if you think about it.