The heats keep on coming: August was another record-hot month
Earth's record-breaking heat is sounding an awful lot like a broken record.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that August, this past summer and the first eight months of 2015 all smashed global records for heat.
That's the fifth straight record hot season in a row and the fourth consecutive record hot month. Meteorologists say 2015 is a near certainty to eclipse 2014 as the hottest year on record.
Earth broke the August record by a sixth of a degree and the summer record by a fifth of a degree. Records go back to 1880.
Since 2000, Earth has broken monthly heat records 20 times and seasonal heat records 11 times. Scientists blame a combination of human-caused climate change and natural El Nino.
El Nino conditions were observed across the tropical Pacific Ocean during August 2015, NOAA said, and analysis by its Climate Prediction Center suggests there is a greater than 90 percent chance it will persist through the winter. Last month, the agency warned that the west coast could be hit by a massive El Nino that one climatologist compared to Godzilla.
On average, the U.S. had it a little easier than the world as a whole, chalking up only its 31st hottest August. But record and near-record conditions were tallied in several regions for the month and the year to date.
In the Midwest and parts of the Northeast, near-record rainfall kept summer temps below average.
At the same time, New England saw near-record August heat, while California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington had their highest January-August temperatures in 135 years of record keeping.
Amid the scorching heat, Washington set another unfortunate record: The state's largest fire ever -- the Okanogan Complex Fire -- charred over 300,000 acres.
This summer, wildfires burned nearly 8 million acres in the U.S., NOAA said, citing the National Interagency Fire Center. More than one million acres were set ablaze in August alone.
As of Sept. 1, 30.4 percent of the contiguous 48 was in drought, up 3.3 percent since late July.