The Earth just witnessed its warmest October as temperatures worldwide stayed relatively high last month, stimulated by record warm ocean temperatures. Different centres including NASA, Japan's Meteorological Agency and University of Alabama reveal that the rise in temperature is due to the buildup in manmade greenhouse gases.
Axel Timmermann, climate scientist and professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said the temperatures even exceeded those of the record-breaking 1998 El Nino year. Timmermann said record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations and anomalously weak North Pacific summer trade winds, which usually cooled the ocean surface, had contributed further to the rise in sea surface temperatures. The warm temperatures now extend in a wide swath from just north of Papua New Guinea to the Gulf of Alaska.
The temporary slowdown in the rate of warming lasted for about 15 years, caused by cooling of ocean waters in parts of the Pacific, but could now be coming to an end. According to preliminary NASA information, the planet's normal temperatures tied with 2005 for the hottest October since records started in 1880.
Timmermann described the events leading up to this upswing as follows: Sea-surface temperatures started to rise unusually quickly in the extratropical North Pacific already in January 2014. A few months later, in April and May, westerly winds pushed a huge amount of very warm water usually stored in the western Pacific along the equator to the eastern Pacific. This warm water has spread along the North American Pacific coast, releasing into the atmosphere enormous amounts of heat -- heat that had been locked up in the Western tropical Pacific for nearly a decade.
However, it should also be observed that satellites measure global average temperatures differently than surface weather stations. Unusually warm Pacific ocean temperatures have been impacting the climate scenario for a great part of the previous year, fortifying a "ridiculously resilient ridge" of high pressure over the West, which has assumed a key part in sustaining the California hot and dry spell.
September witnessed record global average ocean temperatures for any month since 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with temperatures ending at 1.19° Fahrenheit above average, breaking the past month's record of 1.17° Fahrenheit.
A study published a year ago found that worldwide temperatures are hotter now than ever in at least 4,000 years, and its no fortuitous event that carbon dioxide levels are the most astounding they've been in no less than 800,000 years.
Last month NOAA distributed information demonstrating that if every month from October through December were to match its 21st century normal temperature, then the year will in any event tie with 1998 and 2010 for the hottest year on record. In the event that these months' normal temperatures positions any hotter, then the year will be the hottest in the NOAA dataset. It is also being said that unless temperatures in November and December are extremely cold, a record warm year almost seems inevitable.
With agency's inputs.
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