The last record-breaking May was in 2005, when the average temperature climbed to 43.7 degrees.
Other data, including analyses of the sediments surrounding the fossils, reveal that the climate got wetter and the ecosystem was presumably more productive as average temperatures climbed, nixing the notion that these animals shrank because of a reduced food supply.
Warming trends were strongest in the Arctic, as visualized in a map from 2013 to 2017, where average temperatures climbed 4 degrees Fahrenheit over NASA's baseline from 1951 to 1980.
The more carbon dioxide, the higher global average temperatures have climbed, according to climate science.
At the surface, average temperatures have climbed by about 0.13° Celsius per decade since 1979.
Average temperatures have climbed significantly over the past century, as greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, deforestation and industrialized farming enshrouded the world in record amounts.
It remained frigid for twelve centuries and then warmed, even more abruptly; in Greenland, ice-core records show, average annual temperatures climbed by nearly twenty degrees in a single decade.
The relentless heat - average annual temperatures climb well above 30 degrees Celsius - quickly dries away the moisture to leave only salt deposits.
The record continues a global hot streak that scientists have linked to global warming, with average temperatures continuing to climb as extreme weather events occur more frequently.
However, even though average temperatures have inexorably climbed over the last three decades, the year with the most record days — 13 — was 1971.
