Kaʻū News Briefs, Thursday, August 15, 2019

THE HOTTEST JULY EVER RECORDED ON EARTH was reported today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hawaiʻi experienced the second hottest July on record. Scientists pointed to climate change, first recorded through measuring an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere at NOAA's Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. The increase in CO2 makes the planet hotter, scientists determined.

     July's worldwide heatwave set high temperature records from Europe to Africa and Asia to Hawaiʻi, with climate scientists warning that global warming is escalating and could lead to massive disruption of nature's cycles and food growing systems. Extreme heat dried up drinking water sources in India, and sent Greenland into a major melting of its icecap. Arctic sea ice shriveled to a record low for July - 19.8 percent smaller than average. Antarctic sea-ice coverage was 4.3 percent smaller than the 1981-2010 average, with the least amount of ice in the 41-year record. Record temperatures in Alaska led to forest fires across 2.4 million acres.
     The average temperature worldwide in July was 1.71 degrees above the average July temperatures recorded during the entire 20th Century.
      Nine of Earth's ten hottest recorded Julys occurred since 2005, the last five years ranking as the five hottest. Last month was the 43rd consecutive July and 415th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures. See NOAA's full climate report.

Image from NOAA

     NOAA's Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory recorded carbon dioxide levels in May reaching a seasonal peak of 414.7 parts per million. The Observatory has recorded CO2 levels since 1958, when Charles David Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography initiated on-site measurements at the weather station. NOAA installed its own recording system in 1974. 

     Pieter Tans, senior scientist with NOAA's Global Monitoring Division, states the C02 rate of increase is accelerating. Early years at Mauna Loa saw annual increases averaging about 0.7 ppm per year, increasing to about 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s and 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s. The growth rate rose to 2.2 ppm per year during the last decade. There is "abundant and conclusive evidence that the acceleration is caused by increased emissions," Tans said. "These are measurements of the real atmosphere. They do not depend on any models, but they help us verify climate model projections, which if anything, have underestimated the rapid pace of climate change being observed."