Don’t overreact to one hot month, it’s the warming trend that’s important

Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, is quoted in response to a report by NASA that April 2017 was the second warmest on record.

The story, which is carried in The Independent, reveals that global temperature for April was 0.88 degrees Celsius above the average for the month from 1951 to 1980, behind last year’s record figure of 1.06C warmer.

Prof Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds, said:  “We need to be very careful reading too much into a hot month. The important evidence for climate change is the long-term upward trend – and we are certainly seeing that.

“Scientists or campaigners jumping up and down when a record is broken will only backfire and get climate scientists accused of making false predictions if next April is cooler – it may be cooler or warmer next year, but it doesn’t really matter because overall, temperatures are rising.