The Temperature Continues to Rise Through July

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) released its Global State of the Climate report for July 2014 today (it released the U.S. report earlier). The state of the climate for July was not good.

• The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for July 2014 was the fourth highest on record for July, at 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20^th century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F).
• The global land surface temperature was 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20^th century average of 14.3°C (57.8°F), marking the 10^th warmest July on record.
• For the ocean, the July global sea surface temperature was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20^th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), tying with 2009 as the warmest July on record.
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–July period (year-to-date) was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20^th century average of 13.8°C (56.9°F), tying with 2002 as the third warmest such period on record.

Let's review the tally for the year so far:

June 2014 was the hottest June since we started keeping modern records in 1880;

May was the hottest May ever recorded;

April tied 2010 as the hottest April ever recorded;

March was the fourth hottest March ever recorded;

We got a break in February. It was only the 21st hottest February ever recorded;

But, that break followed the hottest January since 2007 and the fourth hottest January on record.

So, let's see what the score is so far for 2014: one 21st hottest month, three 4th hottest months, and three hottest months ever.

What was that the deniers keep saying about how the temperature rise has stopped?