Sound like something you’ve heard before? It’s probably because you have.
Based on NASA data, April was the seventh month in a row that global temperatures set a new record high. It was also the third consecutive month that the record was broken by the largest margin ever.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has yet to reveal its analysis of April temperatures, but if their findings line up with NASA’s, that’ll mean one full year of record-hot months. (The two agencies use slightly different dates to determine the long-term temperature average.)
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said there was a greater than 99 percent chance that 2016 will be the hottest year ever recorded. Other experts have also warned that this year will likely surpass the previous annual record, set in 2015, by the largest ever margin.