Data from thousands of surface monitoring stations worldwide, including ocean buoys in the Pacific and land-based thermometers dotting the continents, show that July was either the warmest or second-warmest month on Earth since at least 1850.
Berkeley Earth, an independent climate monitoring and research organization, found in data released Thursday that last month beat August 2016 for the title of the warmest month by 0.14 degree.
"Though the margin is small, given the uncertainty range, we consider July 2019 to have set a new record for the highest monthly average temperature," the organization said in an analysis.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also announced Thursday that July was the warmest month on record, with the global average surface temperature coming in at 1.71 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average.
Berkeley Earth found that July was 2.20 degrees warmer than the 1850-to-1900 average, which is often used as the baseline for pre-industrial temperatures.
In the Paris climate agreement, world leaders committed to keeping long-term global average surface temperatures to "well below" 3.6 degrees compared with pre-industrial levels. The United States was initially part of that agreement, but President Donald Trump's administration has pulled out.
In addition, NASA found that July was 1.67 degrees above the 20th-century average, making it the warmest July but the second-warmest month in its data base.
NASA, which uses slightly different methods to analyze global surface temperatures, says August 2016 was the warmest month on record. NASA's records date to 1880.
In Arkansas, the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said the state escaped the intense heat with relatively normal temperatures for July.
"I think the global average was high, but for us it was normal and little bit below-normal temperatures," said Erik Green, a meteorologist with the agency's North Little Rock bureau.
Green said some of that can be attributed to abundant rain throughout the state.
"All these spring rains and flooding have been drivers in that," he said. "I would say so far this year we are about 10 inches above the normal when it comes to rainfall."
The weather service posted a summary in July that showed the month would be remembered for the remnants of Hurricane Barry and record rainfall in parts of southwest Arkansas. It noted that while the state experienced some high temperatures during the month, cold fronts tempered the heat and produced record low summer temperatures.
Hot Springs, Jacksonville, Little Rock, North Little Rock, Stuttgart and Texarkana all witnessed record low temperatures that were tied or broken in late July.
"It is very unusual for well-below average temperatures to stick around for more than a day or two this time of year," the agency said in its monthly review. "But that's exactly what happened."
Precipitation was at or above average in much of southern and eastern Arkansas and below average elsewhere.
The weather service said around 16.59 inches of rain fell in Dierks (Howard County) over a three-day period in July. It also noted that monthly rainfall totals were 1 to 3 inches above average at El Dorado (Union County), Jonesboro (Craighead County), Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and West Memphis (Crittenden County).
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Freedman of The Washington Post; and by Stephen Simpson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 08/16/2019