2016 is not universally accepted as the Earth’s “hottest year on record”, but the UK Met Office seems comfortable in declaring it so. Last year was the second hottest.

Yesterday I posted a graph showing the percentage of the current Meteorological Year’s first 63 days that were warmer than the same period last year. Here is a companion chart showing this year’s warm days compared to 2016.

The percentage range is slightly less: North 63.8, South 41.3 (compared to 70.2/33.3) but the 10-station Globe Average is very similar: 51.75 compared to last year and 52.54 compared to the hottest year, 2016. There are still 43 weeks to go for the contrary 9-week globe figures to reverse and make more sense, but it already seems clear that we are heading for another near-record hot year. How much more than “1.1C above pre-industrial average” will it be?