Last month was hottest April ever

April 2016 was the hottest April on record, according to new data released by Nasa, making it the sixth month in a row to have temperatures more than one degree Celsius above the 1951-1980 average.

The April figures released by Nasa continued the remarkably warm start to 2016, with each month among those over the most abnormally hot months in more than 130 years of global figures.

“We knew an El Nino would impact things, but I don’t think anyone expected this jump,” Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist told the Independent.

The increases measured by experts around the world meant that within the last year, global temperatures had increased by 25 per cent of the total increase since the 1880s, Mr Holthaus said.

Within the last 18 months, around one quarter of all coral colonies in the oceans had suffered bleaching as a result of warmer water and increased acidification, he said. In such circumstances, the corals expel the algae living in their tissues and turn white. While coral can recover from such events, it is often fatal.

Mr Holthaus said the record temperatures may continue up to six months, after which they would begin to level out.

Andy Pitman from the University of New South Wales said: “The interesting thing is the scale at which we’re breaking records. It’s clearly all heading in the wrong direction. Climate scientists have been warning about this since at least the 1980s. And it’s been bloody obvious since the 2000s. So where’s the surprise ” Mr Pitmans said the recent figures put the recent goal agreed in Paris of just 1.5°C warming in doubt. “The 1.5°C target, it’s wishful thinking. I don’t know if you’d get 1.5°C if you stopped emissions today. There’s inertia in the system. It’s putting intense pressure on 2°C,” he said.

Periods of unusually hot weather are on the rise in Africa and may become a normal occurrence in 20 years, which could have a damaging effect on life expectancy and crop production in the continent, a new study has warned.

This scenario could be triggered by an increase in average global temperature of 2°C, said researchers who examined temperature data from 1979 to 2015.

Africa experiences high levels of solar radiation all year round and heat waves can occur in any season, not just during summer months. Running models through to 2075, scientists found that unusual heat waves could occur as frequently as four times per year in the future.

“Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and even a modest rise in average global temperature could have severe consequences for the people living there,” said Jana Sillmann of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway.