July 2015: Warmest Month on Record Globally- Jeff Masters and Bob Henson

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3080
<snip>
The Atlantic and Pacific tropics were buzzing with activity on Thursday (see bottom of this post for a very brief update), but Thursday brought other big news as well: July 2015 was the warmest single month in 1627 months of global records that go back to January 1880, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The globally averaged temperature above both land and ocean surfaces was 1.46°F (0.81°C) ahead of the 20th-century average. This trumps the record for any month that was set in July 1998, surpassing that value by 0.08°F (0.14°C). On average, July is the warmest month of the year globally, tpyically driven by midsummer conditions across the Northern Hemisphere’s extensive land areas. However, according to NOAA, record warmth across much of the Pacific and Indian oceans played a major role in July’s new global record. NASA also rated July 2015 as the warmest July on record. July 2015's warmth makes the year-to-date period (January - July) the warmest such period on record, according to both NOAA and NASA. A potent El Niño event in the Eastern Pacific that crossed the threshold into the "strong" category in early July continues to intensify, and strong El Niño events release a large amount of heat to the atmosphere, typically boosting global temperatures by at least 0.1°C. This extra bump in temperature, when combined with the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, makes it extremely likely that 2015 will be Earth's second consecutive warmest year on record.