Summer of 2016 arrives early

The summer of 2016 has arrived early this year.

Please hear me out before you hit send on those emails reminding me it's still May.

• Astronomical summer begins June 20th at 5:34 pm CDT. (summer solstice)

• Meteorological summer begins June 1st.

• Weather maps are basically already in summer mode over Minnesota.

Talk about multi-taking. Meteorologists operate in multiple frames of reference. Astronomical calendar seasons. Meteorological time. Weather map reality? It usually ignores seasonal restrictions. No wonder we're a little batty as a profession.

Yes, there's a reason they call us 'weather geeks.'

The atmosphere is in mid-June mode until further notice. That means temperatures running 5 to 10 degrees warmer than average with highs in the upper 70s and 80s. Abundant Gulf of Mexico moisture with dew points in the 50s and 60s means more rounds of scattered thunderstorms each time a new front of upper atmospheric ripple rides northeast.

Welcome to the longer, and potentially hotter than usual summer of 2016.

• +1F temperatures vs. average so far in May at MSP Airport

• 9th straight warmer than average mont in Minnesota

Occasional T-Storms

Timing is everything. The best chances for more (organized) T-Storm clusters appear to be Thursday night after midnight, on and off Friday into Saturday. Sunday and Memorial Day are looking like the sunnier and warmer holiday weekend boating, bike riding, power lounging days at this point.

The maps show some sun Thursday, then wider T-Storm coverage Friday into Saturday.

Wednesday morning's T-Storm wave broke the sting of 11 dry days at MSP Airport and across much of Minnesota.

Various models crank out an average of over an inch of rain in the next few days. Pick your favorite model and your dry spots.

In my continuing effort to revive the much promised metric system of our youth, I give you the European model forecast courtesy of the Norwegian Met Institute. Translation? Mid-80s and sunny Thursday with more rain Friday into Saturday, Sunday looks sunnier, a chance of more spotty T-showers on Memorial Day.

99% chance 2016 will be the next new hottest year on record?

Three "warmest years on record" in a row? That's unprecedented in the modern climate record.

Andrea Thompson at Climate Central elaborates. I've pulled some key excerpts.

Odds are increasing that 2016 will be the hottest year on the books, as April continued a remarkable streak of record-warm months.

Last month was rated as the warmest April on record by both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released their data this week. In the temperature annals kept by NOAA, it marked the 12th record warmest month in a row.

Climate Central has reanalyzed the temperature data from recent months, averaging the NASA and NOAA numbers and comparing it to the average from 1881-1910 to show how much temperatures have risen from a period closer to preindustrial times.

The analysis shows that the year-to-date temperature through April is 1.45°C above the average from that period. Governments have agreed to limit warming this century to less than 2°C from pre-industrial times and are exploring setting an even more ambitious goal of 1.5°C, which temperatures are currently close to.

“The fact that we are beginning to cross key thresholds at the monthly timescale is indeed an indication of how close we are getting to permanently exceeding those thresholds,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, said in an email.

As El Niño continues to rapidly decay, monthly temperature anomalies are slowly declining. They are still considerably higher than they were just last year, the current title-holder for the hottest year on record.

Given the head start this year has over last, there is a more than 99 percent chance that 2016 will best 2015 as the hottest year on the books, according to Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the agencies temperature data.

If 2016 does set the mark, it will be the third record-setting year in a row.

It is likely, though, that the streak would end with this year, as a La Niña event is looking increasingly likely to follow El Niño, and it tends to have a cooling effect on global temperatures.

But even La Niña years today are warmer than El Niño years of previous decades — a clear sign of how much human caused-warming has increased global temperatures. In fact, the planet hasn’t seen a record cold year since 1911.