A long awaited communication the European observatory Copernicus reported that global average temperatures in the three summer months (June, July, August) were the highest ever measured, breaking the 2023 record.
“In the last three months, the world has experienced the hottest June and hottest August on record, the hottest day on record and the hottest summer on record,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the World Health Service, in alarm. climate change (C3S) at the Copernicus Observatory, in a statement released.
“This record-breaking streak increases the likelihood that 2024 will be the hottest year on record,” surpassing the previous record set last year, he added, due to rising human-caused greenhouse gas concentrations.
Countries such as Spain, Japan, Australia (in the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere) and provinces in China announced this week that they had recorded record high temperatures in August.
On a global scale, August 2024 equaled the temperature record for the corresponding month of any year, held by 2023, 1.51°C above the average of the pre-industrial period (1850-1900), that is, above the 1.5°C limit, which was the most ambitious target of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
This emblematic limit has been exceeded in 13 of the last 14 months, according to data from the Copernicus institute (which differs slightly from data from corresponding bodies in the USA, Japan and Great Britain).
The data
Over the past ten months, the average temperature was 1.64°C above pre-industrial times, according to the same source. The year 2023 ended with an average global temperature of 1.48°C and 2024, marked by heatwaves, droughts and extreme floods, has a strong chance of being the year in which the threshold is crossed.
However, this anomaly must be observed for decades to consider that the climate, which during this period is considered to be about 1.2° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, is now stabilizing at a level above 1.5° Celsius.
Copernicus’ records began to be kept in 1940, but average temperatures have not been recorded for at least 120,000 years, according to paleoclimate data, extracted mainly from ice sheets and sediments.
Successive heat records around the world are fueled by unprecedented warming of the oceans —which cover 70% of the Earth’s surface—, bodies of water that absorb 90% of the excess heat due to human activity: the average sea surface temperature has been maintained at levels well above normal since May 2023, which makes phenomena such as cyclones much more serious.
Naftemporiki.gr with information from APE-MPE