The contiguous United States (CONUS) was exceedingly warm east of the Rockies in February 2017, and is notable as being the 27th month in a row with more record highs than lows.
Warm Februaries becoming much more common in the US
Heatwave
Extreme heat in southeast Australia, February 2017
New South Wales, southeastern Australia, its hottest summer on record in 2017. Temperature records across the central and the eastern parts of Australia were broken, leading the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to issue a Special Climate Statement on the exceptional heat.
Record high temperatures in India, 2016
In May 2016, an all-time record high temperature of 51°C was recorded in Rajasthan, India, by some accounts the third-highest temperature ever documented globally. What was behind the extreme heat?
Great Barrier reef bleaching, 2016
The worst bleaching event on record has affected corals across the Great Barrier Reef in the last few months. As of the end of March, a whopping 93% of the reef has experienced bleaching.
2015 – a record breaking hot year
With colleagues at the University of Reading, we performed a simple analysis to assess what factors played a role in this record heat, specifically the roles of greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming, the natural climate oscillation known as El Niño, as well as solar activity and volcanic aerosols.