Paris (AFP) – It is “increasingly likely” 2024 will be the hottest year on record, despite July ending a 13-month streak of monthly temperature records, the EU’s climate monitor said Thursday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) stated that last month was the second warmest on record since 1940, only slightly cooler than July 2023. Between June 2023 and June 2024, each month eclipsed its own temperature record for the time of year.
“The streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S. Last month, the global average temperature was 16.91 degrees Celsius, only 0.04C below July 2023, according to C3S’s monthly bulletin. However, Burgess pointed out that “the overall context hasn’t changed; our climate continues to warm.” She emphasized that the devastating effects of climate change began well before 2023 and will persist until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero.
From January to July, global temperatures were 0.70C above the 1991-2020 average. This anomaly would need to drop significantly over the remainder of the year for 2024 not to be hotter than 2023, making it “increasingly likely that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record,” said C3S.
In July 2024, temperatures were 1.48C warmer than the estimated average for that month during the period of 1850-1900, prior to the world starting to rapidly burn fossil fuels. This rise in temperature has resulted in punishing heat for hundreds of millions of people. The Earth experienced its two hottest days on record, with global average temperatures reaching a virtual tie on July 22 and 23 at 17.6C, according to C3S. The Mediterranean was gripped by a heatwave that scientists stated would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming, while China and Japan experienced their hottest July on record.
The extreme weather conditions included record-breaking rainfall in Pakistan, wildfires ravaging western U.S. states, and Hurricane Beryl causing destruction as it moved from the Caribbean to the southeastern United States. “The end of record-breaking monthly temperatures is not a cause for celebration,” remarked Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at London’s Imperial College. Otto referenced the heat-related deaths of 21 individuals in a single day in Morocco in July as a “shocking illustration of just how deadly extreme heat can be.”
“To stop climate change, we need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop deforestation, and replace them with renewable energy,” she added. “We have all the technology and know-how to do that… We just lack the political will.”
Temperatures for the oceans, which absorb 90 percent of the excess heat caused by human activities, were also recorded as the second warmest for the month of July. Average sea surface temperatures reached 20.88C last month, only 0.01C below July 2023. This marked the end of a 15-month period of crashing heat records for the oceans. However, scientists at C3S noted that “air temperatures over the ocean remained unusually high over many regions,” despite a transition from the El Niño weather pattern—known for contributing to a spike in global temperatures—to its opposite, La Niña, which typically has a cooling effect.
On Wednesday, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo reflected on a year of “widespread, intense and extended heatwaves.” “This is becoming too hot to handle,” she stated.
© 2024 AFP
