"Latest monthly figures add to string of recent temperature records and all but assure 2016 will be hottest year on record".

"April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records.

The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever recorded.

It makes three months in a row that the monthly record has been broken by the largest margin ever, and seven months in a row that are at least 1C above the 1951-80 mean for that month. When the string of record-smashing months started in February, scientists began talking about a “climate emergency”."

Michael Slezak reports for the Guardian May 15, 2016. [2]