Earth breaks heat record again, but not by as much as before

WASHINGTON — Earth sizzled to its 13th straight month of record heat in May, but it wasn’t quite as much of a scorcher as previous months, federal scientists say.

Record May heat, from Alaska to India and especially in the oceans, put the global average temperature at 60.17 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NOAA. That’s 1.57 degrees above the 20th-century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

There’s still a good chance that June will break records even as El Nino dissipates, scientists say. And in the Southwest U.S. temperatures are forecast near 120 degrees later this week. NOAA’s July through September forecast is for hotter-than-average temperatures in the entire U.S. except a part of southeastern Texas.

“We’re in a new neighborhood now as far as global temperature,” said Deke Arndt, NOAA’s climate monitoring chief. “We’ve kind of left the previous decade behind.”

But it’s not quite as broiling as it has been. May only broke the record — set in 2015 — by .04 degrees.

“It is slightly off from the kind of unprecedented large global temperatures we’ve seen in the last five to seven months,” Arndt says.

Arndt says the record warm temperatures are due to a strong El Nino placed on top of man-made global warming from heat-trapping gases that come from the burning of fossil fuels.

The El Nino has just dissipated and forecasters expect its cooler flip side, La Nina, to kick in soon, which should keep global temperatures a bit lower than they’ve been, but still warmer than 20th-century average, Arndt said

But that may not be quite enough to keep 2016 from being the third straight record hot year, Arndt says. That’s because so far, 2016 is averaging 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which beats the previous January to May record set last year by 0.43 degrees.