PARIS: It is “increasingly likely” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, even though July ended a 13-month streak of monthly temperature records, the EU’s climate monitor said on Thursday.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last month was the second warmest on record since 1940, just slightly cooler than July 2023.
Between June 2023 and June 2024, each month eclipsed its own temperature record for that time of year.
“The streak of record months has ended, but only by a hair,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.
Last month, the global average temperature was 16.91 degrees Celsius, just 0.04 degrees below July 2023, according to the C3S monthly bulletin.
But “the overall context hasn’t changed, our climate continues to warm,” Burgess said.
“The devastating effects of climate change began long before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero,” she said.
From January to July, global temperatures were 0.70 C above the 1991-2020 average.
That anomaly would have to drop significantly for the rest of this year to keep 2024 from being warmer than 2023 — “so it’s increasingly likely that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” C3S said.
July 2024 was 1.48°C warmer than the estimated average monthly temperatures for the period 1850-1900, before the world began burning fossil fuels rapidly.
This translated into punishing heat for hundreds of millions of people.
The country experienced its two hottest days on record, with global average temperatures in a virtual tie on July 22 and 23 reaching 17.6C, C3S said.
The Mediterranean has been hit by a heat wave that scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming, as China and Japan experienced their hottest July on record.
Record rainfall lashed Pakistan, wildfires ravaged western US states and Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction as it swept from the Caribbean to the southeastern United States.
Ocean temperatures, which absorb 90 percent of excess human-caused heat, were also the second warmest on record for the month of July.
Average sea surface temperatures last month were 20.88°C, just 0.01°C below July 2023.
This ended a 15-month period of falling ocean temperature records.
However, the C3S scientists noted that “air temperatures over the ocean remained unusually high in many areas” despite El Nino weather fluctuations that helped raise global temperatures to the opposite, La Nina, which has a cooling effect.
On Wednesday, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo reflected on a year of “widespread, intense and prolonged heat.” “This is getting too hot to handle,” she said.
