Seattle stayed cool in April while the planet felt record heat

Though you might not believe it if you live in Seattle, April 2024 was the earth’s hottest April on record, with the pollution-fueled heat expected to continue.

It was the 11th month in a row that surface air temperatures set a global heat record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the 13th month in a row that surface sea temperatures did so.

The service’s monthly updates on global air and sea surface temperatures are based on “billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.”

The Seattle area bucked the global climate trend in April.

Seattle was 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) colder than the city’s long-term average for April. With just 0.89 inches of rain, Seattle was exceptionally dry as well, with just a third of the 30-year average for April since 1991, according to the nonprofit Climate Central.

Mountain snowpack in Washington state is currently 40% below normal, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Most of the state is under a drought emergency declared by Gov. Jay Inslee on April 16.

Short-term, local weather is a much noisier signal than global climate, with temperatures and precipitation amounts bouncing around more than long-term, global averages do.

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center says most of Washington state should expect above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation for May through June.

Copernicus Climate Change Service director Carlo Buontempo said El Niño conditions in the eastern tropical Pacific are waning, which should push global temperatures down slightly in coming months.

“However, whilst temperature variations associated with natural cycles like El Niño come and go, the extra energy trapped into the ocean and the atmosphere by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will keep pushing the global temperature towards new records," Buontempo said in a press release.

The Earth’s average surface temperature from May 2023 until April 2024 is the highest of any 12-month period on record, at 0.73°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.61°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

The 197 nations that have ratified the 2015 Paris climate treaty have agreed to try to keep the planet’s temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.