Japan¡¯s average temperature in April was the highest in nearly 130 years due to the lingering effects of El Nino, a climate phenomenon that causes higher sea water temperatures, since last year.
The Meteorological Agency said Wednesday that the average temperature for April was 2.76 degrees Celsius higher than the average year, making it the hottest April nationwide since the agency began compiling statistics in 1898.
Over the past year, Japan has experienced a streak of record-breaking high temperatures, fueled by El Nino and human-induced climate change.
Some cities, such as Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture, topped 30 C on Sunday.
The second-highest average temperature for April was in 1998, when it was 1.97 C higher than the average temperature for the month in the years between 1991 and 2020.
Northern Japan, which refers to Hokkaido and the Tohoku region, and Eastern Japan, which includes the regions of Kanto, Tokai and Hokuriku, and Okinawa and the Amami islands, experienced their hottest April since 1946, when the agency started gathering data on average regional temperatures.
The average temperature was 3.6 C higher than the norm in Tohoku and 3 C higher in Hokkaido as well as the Kanto and Koshin regions, the former of which includes Tokyo.
Above-average temperatures were also recorded in the Tokai region prefectures of Shizuoka, Gifu, Mie and Aichi, where it was 2.6 C higher, and Okinawa, where it was 2.7 C higher.
The agency also found that sunny hours were significantly limited in Western Japan, which straddles the regions of Kansai to Kyushu. In contrast, sunny hours were abundant on the Sea of Japan coasts of Tohoku and Hokkaido.
From 1898 to around 2000, above-average temperatures for April were rare. But since the turn of the century, such temperatures have become more common, with all years since 2015 ¡ª except for 2019 and 2020 ¡ª marking higher-than-average figures.
Temperatures are also expected to be above-average from May to July, as the area around Japan is likely to be covered by warm air, the Meteorological Agency said in a three-month forecast in April.
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