July has become the warmest month in the Northern Hemisphere since 1891, the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said in a statement, TASS reported.

"July 2016 became the warmest month throughout the entire history of regular meteorological surveillance on our planet. The average temperature surpassed the previous record, registered last year, by 0.2 degrees," the statement says.

From May 2015 to July 2016, average air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere hit record highs. "There hasn't been anything like that in the meteorological annals before. Earlier, the unprecedented rise in air temperatures on Earth was blamed on El Niño, but by now it's over and the temperature keeps rising," meteorologists say.

As before, the biggest anomalies in July occurred in the Arctic: plus 4-8 degrees in the Russian North, on Novaya Zemlya and Yamal, and in the Barents and Kara seas, and plus 2-5 degrees in Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Last month saw record-breaking air temperatures in the Arctic.

The climate tended to warm, in general, in temperate latitudes as well. In central Russia, eastern Europe, Mongolia, northern China, and on Lake Baikal, temperatures were 2-4 degrees higher than normal. The Middle East, too, contributed to the process with anomalies of plus 2-3 degrees.

In some regions, however, the average monthly temperatures dropped slightly to below norm. It was cooler in Yakutia, India and eastern Canada (Newfoundland province), which is typical for the region, as well as in vast water areas in the tropical latitudes of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.