June-August 2024 was the hottest ever recorded
Published: 02:09 PM,Sep 06,2024 | EDITED : 06:09 PM,Sep 06,2024
A road worker drinks water on a construction site as southern California is facing a heatwave, in Los Angeles
The European Union's climate change monitoring service said on Friday that the world is emerging from its warmest northern hemisphere summer since records began, as global warming continues to intensify.
The boreal summer of June to August this year blew past last summer to become the world's warmest, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.
The exceptional heat increases the likelihood that 2024 will outrank 2023 as the planet's warmest on record. 'During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,' said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess. Unless countries urgently reduce their planet-heating emissions, extreme weather 'will only become more intense', she said.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. The planet's changed climate continued to fuel disasters this summer. In Sudan, flooding from heavy rains last month affected more than 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn country. Elsewhere, scientists confirmed climate change is driving a severe ongoing drought on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan, and China in July, leaving more than 100 people dead. Human-caused climate change and the El Nino natural weather phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, both pushed temperatures to record highs earlier in the year. Copernicus said below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month indicated a shift to La Nina, which is El Nino's cooler counterpart.
But that didn't prevent unusually high global sea surface temperatures worldwide, with average temperatures in August hotter than in the same month of any other year except for 2023. C3S' dataset goes back to 1940, which the scientists cross-checked with other data to confirm that this summer was the hottest since the 1850 pre-industrial period.
'This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record.' The average global temperature at the Earth's surface was 16.82C in August, according to Copernicus, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.
The June and August global temperature broke through the level of 1.5C above the pre-industrial average -- a key threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, raising the likelihood and intensity of climate disasters such as droughts, fires, and floods.
The heat was exacerbated in 2023 and early 2024 by the cyclical weather phenomenon El Nino, though Copernicus scientist Julien Nicolas told AFP its effects were not as strong as they sometimes are.
Meanwhile, the contrary cyclical cooling phenomenon, known as La Nina, has not yet started, he said. A complete assessment of the impact of the temperature extremes will take time, but a study published in mid-August estimated that 30,000-65,000 people in Europe died from heat-related illnesses in 2023, mainly among the elderly.
- Emissions reductions - Against the global trend, regions such as Alaska, the eastern United States, parts of South America, Pakistan, and the Sahel desert zone in northern Africa had lower than average temperatures in August, the report said. But others such as Australia -- where it was winter -- Japan and Spain experienced record warmth in August.
China logged its hottest August in more than six decades last month, its national weather service said after the country endured a summer of extreme weather and heatwaves across much of its north and west. China is the leading emitter of greenhouse gases, but with Beijing installing renewable capacity at record speed, and a construction slump dragging down emissions-heavy steel production, there are signs the nation could hit the peak early, experts say.
Globally, August 2024 matched that month's previous global temperature record from one year earlier, while this June was hotter than last, Copernicus data in the report showed. July was slightly hotter in 2023 than this year, but on average the three-month period broke the record in 2024. Governments have targets to reduce their countries' planet-heating emissions to try to keep the rise below 1.5C under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Scientists will not consider that threshold to be definitively passed until it has been observed being breached over several decades. The average level of warming is currently about 1.2C, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. Copernicus said the 1.5C level has been passed in 13 of the past 14 months.
- Wildfires, hurricanes - The oceans are also heating to record levels, raising the risk of more intense storms. Copernicus said that outside of the poles, the average sea surface temperature in August was just under 21C, the second-highest level on record for that month. It said August 'was drier than average over most of continental Europe' -- noting the wildfires that struck countries such as Greece.
But places such as western Russia and Turkey were wetter than normal, with floods in some places. The eastern United States had more rain than usual, including areas lashed by Hurricane Debby.
'The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,' Copernicus's deputy director Burgess said. Some researchers say that emissions in some of the biggest countries may have peaked or will soon do so, partly as a result of the drive towards low-carbon energy.
The boreal summer of June to August this year blew past last summer to become the world's warmest, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.
The exceptional heat increases the likelihood that 2024 will outrank 2023 as the planet's warmest on record. 'During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,' said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess. Unless countries urgently reduce their planet-heating emissions, extreme weather 'will only become more intense', she said.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. The planet's changed climate continued to fuel disasters this summer. In Sudan, flooding from heavy rains last month affected more than 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn country. Elsewhere, scientists confirmed climate change is driving a severe ongoing drought on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan, and China in July, leaving more than 100 people dead. Human-caused climate change and the El Nino natural weather phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, both pushed temperatures to record highs earlier in the year. Copernicus said below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month indicated a shift to La Nina, which is El Nino's cooler counterpart.
But that didn't prevent unusually high global sea surface temperatures worldwide, with average temperatures in August hotter than in the same month of any other year except for 2023. C3S' dataset goes back to 1940, which the scientists cross-checked with other data to confirm that this summer was the hottest since the 1850 pre-industrial period.
'This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record.' The average global temperature at the Earth's surface was 16.82C in August, according to Copernicus, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.
The June and August global temperature broke through the level of 1.5C above the pre-industrial average -- a key threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, raising the likelihood and intensity of climate disasters such as droughts, fires, and floods.
The heat was exacerbated in 2023 and early 2024 by the cyclical weather phenomenon El Nino, though Copernicus scientist Julien Nicolas told AFP its effects were not as strong as they sometimes are.
Meanwhile, the contrary cyclical cooling phenomenon, known as La Nina, has not yet started, he said. A complete assessment of the impact of the temperature extremes will take time, but a study published in mid-August estimated that 30,000-65,000 people in Europe died from heat-related illnesses in 2023, mainly among the elderly.
- Emissions reductions - Against the global trend, regions such as Alaska, the eastern United States, parts of South America, Pakistan, and the Sahel desert zone in northern Africa had lower than average temperatures in August, the report said. But others such as Australia -- where it was winter -- Japan and Spain experienced record warmth in August.
China logged its hottest August in more than six decades last month, its national weather service said after the country endured a summer of extreme weather and heatwaves across much of its north and west. China is the leading emitter of greenhouse gases, but with Beijing installing renewable capacity at record speed, and a construction slump dragging down emissions-heavy steel production, there are signs the nation could hit the peak early, experts say.
Globally, August 2024 matched that month's previous global temperature record from one year earlier, while this June was hotter than last, Copernicus data in the report showed. July was slightly hotter in 2023 than this year, but on average the three-month period broke the record in 2024. Governments have targets to reduce their countries' planet-heating emissions to try to keep the rise below 1.5C under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Scientists will not consider that threshold to be definitively passed until it has been observed being breached over several decades. The average level of warming is currently about 1.2C, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. Copernicus said the 1.5C level has been passed in 13 of the past 14 months.
- Wildfires, hurricanes - The oceans are also heating to record levels, raising the risk of more intense storms. Copernicus said that outside of the poles, the average sea surface temperature in August was just under 21C, the second-highest level on record for that month. It said August 'was drier than average over most of continental Europe' -- noting the wildfires that struck countries such as Greece.
But places such as western Russia and Turkey were wetter than normal, with floods in some places. The eastern United States had more rain than usual, including areas lashed by Hurricane Debby.
'The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,' Copernicus's deputy director Burgess said. Some researchers say that emissions in some of the biggest countries may have peaked or will soon do so, partly as a result of the drive towards low-carbon energy.