TOKYO: Japan suffered its joint warmest summer this year since records began, equalling the level seen in 2023, data from the weather office showed on Monday. Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the hottest year on record for the Earth due to a warming planet.
Japan's long-term average temperature between June and August was 1.76 degrees Celsius above the standard value, the joint highest since statistics began being kept in 1898, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
This July was already the hottest in Japan since records began, with temperatures across the archipelago 2.16°C higher than average. In central Tokyo alone, 123 people died of heatstroke in July, when extreme heatwaves saw a record number of ambulances mobilised in the capital, according to local authorities.
Southern Japan was also hit by a major typhoon last week, one of the strongest to affect the archipelago of 125 million people in decades. Typhoon Shanshan killed at least six people, including three family members in a landslide, and brought record rainfall to many areas.
Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly, and lasting longer over land due to climate change, according to a study released in July. A rapid attribution analysis by Imperial College London, using peer-reviewed methodology, calculated that Typhoon Shanshan's winds were 26 per cent more likely due to a warming planet.
A Japanese weather agency official cited the unusual movement of westerly winds above Japan this year, which "made it easier for the archipelago to be shrouded in warm air from the south". "Also at play is the long-term effect of global warming, which is pushing up average temperatures," said weather agency official Kaoru Takahashi.
Scientists say that fossil fuel emissions are worsening the length, frequency, and intensity of heatwaves across the world. From January to July, global temperatures were 0.7°C above the 1991-2020 average, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Record temperatures have been observed in the Mediterranean Sea, Norway's Arctic Svalbard archipelago, and the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the past few weeks alone. Australia registered a record-high winter temperature last month, with the mercury hitting 41.6°C in part of its rugged and remote northwest coast.
In Europe, Greece has experienced 50 per cent more summer wildfires this year than in 2023, as well as its earliest heatwave and warmest winter on record. The rising temperatures are leading to longer wildfire seasons and increasing the area burnt, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. — AFP
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