Last month the third hottest June ever recorded
Image credit: PA
Last month was the third hottest June ever recorded, coming behind June 2016 and June 2017 in records of highest temperatures and suggesting 2015, 2016 and 2017 will be the three hottest years since records began.
New data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show land and sea-surface temperatures for June 2017 were 0.82C above the 20th century average, following June 2016, which was 0.92C above the average, and June 2015 which was 0.89C higher.
NOAA said June 2017 was the 41st consecutive June and the 390th consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.
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Temperatures from the first half of 2017 suggest it will be the second hottest since records began, after 2016.
Average Arctic sea ice coverage for June was 7.5 percent below the 1981-2010 average, the sixth smallest for the month since satellite records began in 1979.
Meanwhile globally averaged land-surface temperature and the sea-surface temperature ranked second highest on record for the year to date
Recent figures from NASA show that, apart from June 1998, the 10 warmest months of June occurred between 2005 and 2017.
The earth’s 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.
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