Next up on Bloomberg today: Earth's Temperature Just Shattered the Thermometer

This is not the proverbial good news/bad news. This is bad news.  Expected but not at all welcomed.  You know the potential environmental changes the warming can bring.  Get ready for a hot summer and some real health issues with the heat.

Only three months in, and 2016 will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
April 19, 2016
Tom Randall



The Earth is warming so fast that it's surprising even the climate scientists who predicted this was coming. 

Last month was the hottest March in 137 years of record keeping, according to data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's the 11th consecutive month to set a new record, and it puts 2016 on course to set a third straight annual record. 

Now, it might seem premature to talk about setting a new yearly record after just three months of data, but these months have been such an extreme departure from the norm that Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has already made the call. 

"I estimate [a greater than] 99 percent chance of an annual record in 2016," Schmidt wrote on Twitter last week, after NASA released its own record climate readings. A month ago—following the release of February's data—Schmidt wrote, simply, "Wow." 

Since 1980, the world has set a new annual temperature record approximately every three years, and 15 of the hottest 16 years ever measured are in the 21st century. The chart below shows earth's warming climate, measured from land and sea, dating back to 1880.