Gerald Ford was president and the nation was celebrating its bicentennial the last time the Earth had a cooler-than-average June, and this past June was the Earth's hottest since weather records began in 1880, a report made public Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found.
A separate climate report from NASA, also released Tuesday, confirmed the NOAA data.
June marked the 14th straight month of record-setting heat, the planet's longest such streak in NOAA's 137 years of record keeping. Data from both NOAA and NASA indicate the Earth is well on its way to its warmest year on record.
Man-made climate change is the underlying cause of the record warmth, but the El Niño climate pattern in the tropical Pacific also boosted global temperatures beginning in October, NASA's Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist, said in a statement.
Even without El Niño, temperatures in first six months of 2016 would have hit records, Schmidt said.
Parts of the southwestern U.S., southern Mexico, northeastern Brazil, northeastern and southwestern Africa, the Middle East, northern Australia, and Indonesia felt the record warmth. Only central and southern South America experienced cooler-than-average conditions during June 2016.
The sheet of ice that covers the Arctic shrunk to its smallest size ever for June since records began in 1979, NOAA and NASA said. The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40% less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, NASA reported.
Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer and refreezes each winter. It typically shrinks to its smallest size in September and then grows back to its peak March each year.
The area of Antarctic sea ice was also below average in June, according to NOAA, and was the the smallest since 2011.
"It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme," said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA. "This warmth as well as unusual weather patterns" have lead to the shrinkage.
