September 22nd, 2016 officially marks the start of fall this year, but depending on where you live you may not be ready to pull out your tall boots and chunky sweaters just yet. This August’s record-breaking weather continued a streak of 11 consecutive months of the hottest temperatures on record (October 2015 – August 2016).
Although summer temperatures in the Northern hemisphere typically peak in July, August 2016 tied with July 2016 for the warmest month since record keeping began in 1880. August was also hotter than the mean August temperature from 1951-1980 by nearly a full degree celsius. You may recall that the stated goal of international climate talks is to keep climate change below 2°C.
If global temperatures rise above 2°Celsius (3.6° F) most credible scientists agree that Earth’s climate will be fundamentally changed. Not only will higher land temperatures affect food production, but higher ocean temperatures will devastate already threatened fisheries, sea levels may rise as much as 10 meters due to the melting of polar ice caps, and may trigger a catastrophic release of methane hydrates from the arctic.
It’s important to remember that year to year temperature changes can be anomalies. Some people point to the unusually cold and snowy winters across North America in recent years as a sign that human-caused global warming doesn’t exist. The high temperatures in both July and August are due at least in part to an unusually strong El Niño effect. In El Niño years the waters of the Pacific ocean are warmer than average, causing changes in land temperature and in the amount of precipitation.
However, the bulk of the temperature rise the earth has seen over the past 11 months is due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere, and it seems probable that 2016 will soon be declared the hottest year on record, supplanting 2015 which currently holds that title. 2014 is currently in second place. In fact, every year since 2001 has been ranked in the top 15 hottest years on record despite an occasional record breaking winter.
What can we expect going forward? The consensus is that extreme weather patterns will continue and worsen as temperatures rise. Rain and snowfall will become harder to predict, and some areas will experience torrential flooding even as other areas succumb to withering droughts. A number of governmental and private organisations have offered advice on how individuals can do their part to reduce the temperature rise. Along with reducing fossil fuel consumption, buying products that are responsibly produced and which maintain eco-friendly policies is a good first step.
Global climate change is a problem that is already causing dramatic changes in our planet’s weather. Right now, it may seem like a small inconvenience, but if left unchecked, we’ll soon be facing consequences that reach far beyond our fall wardrobe.