In 2024 he was registered the hottest June in history, This surpasses the already exceptional record set in 2023, the European Copernicus Observatory announced on Monday. Every month since June 2023 has broken its own temperature record, marking a run of 13 months of historic heat, Copernicus said, adding that as a result, “the global average temperature over the past 12 months (July 2023 – June 2024) is the highest ever recorded.
“This is more than a statistical oddity and highlights an important and ongoing change in our climate,” said the agency's director, Carlo Buontempo, after a month marked by strong heat waves in Mexico, China, Greece and Saudi Arabia, where she died. more than 1,300 people during the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The incessant rainsa phenomenon that scientists also linked to global warming, caused major flooding Brazil, China, Kenya, Afghanistan, Russia and France. In early July, Hurricane Beryl devastated several Caribbean islands, becoming the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
“Even if this particular series of extremes ends at some point, we are poised to see new records broken as the climate continues to warm,” Buontempo added. Consecutive temperature records coincided with El Niñoa natural cyclic phenomenon of warming of water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which contributes to the increase in the global average temperature.
“It was one of the factors that explained the temperature records, but not the only one,” said Julian Nicolas, C3S scientist. Ocean temperatures also reached new highs, with record sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, North Pacific and Indian Oceans influencing the increased heat across the planet. In June, sea surface temperatures reached a new milestone: 15 consecutive months of new highs, a fact that Nicolas described as 'shocking'.
The oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface and absorbs 90% of the extra heat related to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. “What happens at the surface of the oceans has a big impact on the air temperature above the surface and also on the average temperature of the Earth,” Nicolas said.
However, the world is about to enter a La Niña phase, which will cooling effectso “we can expect global (air) temperatures to drop in the coming months,” he indicated. “If these record (sea surface) temperatures continue, even if La Niña conditions develop, 2024 could be warmer than 2023. But it is too early to say anything about that,” he added.
After more than a year of consecutive monthly records, “the average global (air) temperature over the past 12 months (July 2023 – June 2024) is the highest ever recorded,” according to Copernicus. That means it is “1.64 ºC above the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900, when human greenhouse gas emissions had not yet warmed the planet.” This does not mean that the The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, because it is measured in decades rather than individual years.
However, last month Copernicus said that there was an 80% chance that average annual temperatures of the Earth will at least temporarily exceed the 1.5 ºC threshold over the next five years.