【Naked Reunion (1993)】

April 2020 matched the warmest April on Naked Reunion (1993)record, continuing the year's robust global warming trend.

Above-average temperatures dominated the globe in April, the European Union Climate Change Service reported Tuesday in its monthly summary, essentially tying the exceptionally warm April in 2016. But, the agency noted temperatures were "markedly below average over large parts of North America," including cooler spring temperatures across much of the eastern half of the U.S.

What's the deal?

The deal is that Earth's overall relentless heating trend will still inevitably continue this year (19 of the last 20 years are now the warmest on record) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) currently expects 2020 to be at least one of the top five warmest years in over 140 years of record-keeping, with a 75 percent chance of becoming the hottest year ever recorded.

Much of North America in April, however, experienced relatively cooler air from Arctic regions like Alaska flowing down south, explained Jeff Weber, a research meteorologist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. This was due to "an amplified jet stream," Weber explained, referencing the band of high altitude, powerful winds traveling four to eight miles up in the atmosphere (often at altitudes some five miles up where jets fly). Like a barrier, this band of west-driving winds often separates colder northern air from warmer southern air. 

The jet stream is liable to bend dramatically, meaning big waves form that can swoop down south and allow colder, northern air to come with it.

"For example, we had 11 degrees [Fahrenheit] in Boulder in April," said Weber. "It killed a lot of trees and plants."

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Wavy jetstream on April 30, 2020. Credit: George Mason University / Center forOcean-Land-Atmosphere Studies

And there's more, unusual cold weather now coming to the Northeast during the first two weeks of May. The infamous polar vortex — a whirling jet of air that forms over the Arctic during winter — recently destabilized. This has allowed cooler air to spill southward.

"Toronto and Buffalo will see snow," said Weber, referencing the weather later this week. "Other parts of the Northeast will see cold and rainy weather."

But, critically, one region doesn't define the world. A big swath of North America was cooler than usual in April, yet Switzerland, France, Mexico, and parts of Africa experienced "well above average" temperatures, the European Union Climate Change Service noted, while "temperatures were most above average over much of Siberia, northern and coastal central Greenland, and parts of Antarctica, the Alaskan coast and the Arctic Ocean."

The clearest warming signal, however, isn't on land. It's in the ocean, which soaks up over 90 percent of the heat trapped on Earth by human activities.

"Global warming is really ocean warming," Josh Willis, a NASA oceanographer, previously told Mashable. The ocean has been warming continually since around 1990, regardless of the chaotic whims of Earth's incessantly churning atmosphere.

Even so, the warming trends on land are still stark. With boosted background temperatures come greater odds for breaking high-temperature records. For example, 364all-time high temperatures were set in 2019, versus just 70all-time lows.

Meanwhile, in 2020, January was the warmest January on record, February was the second hottest such month on record, and March was on par with the second and third warmest Marches on record.

Now, April 2020 is tied for first.

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