If you felt this summer was unusually warm, you were not wrong. Europe’s climate monitoring agency has just confirmed that the 2024 summer was the hottest ever on record. Copernicus reported Friday that unless average global temperatures drop by at least 0.30°C for the remaining months of this year (this has never happened before), 2024 would become the warmest year in recorded history. The previous hottest year on record was 2023. From the climate perspective, two successive warmest years on record do not augur well for the planet which is faced with the growing threat of climate change.
According to Copernicus’s data, global average temperature for the June–August 2024 summer was 0.69°C above the 1991-2020 average for these three months. The previous highest temperature anomaly for the same period was recorded in June–August 2023 (0.66°C).
Copernicus also reported that this August was the joint-warmest on record globally, together with August 2023. August 2024 recorded surface air temperature of 16.82°C, which was 0.71°C above the 1991-2020 average for this month. When compared with the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900, average global temperature in August 2024 was 1.51°C higher.
August 2024 is "the 13th month in a 14-month period for which the global-average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels", it said.
Further, the EU Climate Service stated that the global-average temperature for the past 12-month period (September 2023 – August 2024) was the highest on record for any 12-month period. The global average temperature for this period was 0.76°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.64°C above the pre-industrial average.
‘Greater Devastating Consequences’
"During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). “This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record,” she added.
Burgess cautioned that if temperatures continue to rise largely due to the burning of fossil fuels, the temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense. There will be greater devastating consequences for humans and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, she said further.
In August, temperatures were above average in several parts of Europe, over eastern Antarctica, Texas, Mexico, Canada, northeast Africa, Iran, China, Japan, and Australia, Copernicus said. Temperatures were, however, below average over far eastern Russia and Alaska, the eastern US, parts of southern South America, Pakistan and the Sahel, it added.
Southeast Europe, including Romania, Serbia and Bosnia, experienced heatwaves. So did Italy, Portugal and Spain. Outside Europe, in July, the highest above-average global temperatures were recorded in eastern Antarctica - the coldest place on the planet. Shockingly, the arctic part of Canada also experienced heatwaves and a record temperature of 35°C. Heatwave conditions were also recorded in Africa, Iran, and central Asia.
China experienced its hottest August on record while Japan reeled under its warmest summer since its national records began. Heat records also tumbled in Australia where the highest August temperature since 1910 was recorded.
‘Air-raid sirens’
Record high temperatures this year and last year have been recorded largely due to the El Nino natural weather phenomenon and human-induced climate change. El Nino leads to warm surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The La Nina cool phase, which follows El Nino, has likely started to set in and caused below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month, Copernicus said.
If global average temperatures come down over the next few months, a majority of the record heat could be attributed to El Nino. However, if that doesn’t happen which is likely to be the case, then, scientists have already warned, the planet would possibly have entered ‘uncharted territory’ as far as climate change is concerned.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, aptly put it, as reported by the Associated Press: “Like people living in a war zone with the constant thumping of bombs and clatter of guns, we are becoming deaf to what should be alarm bells and air-raid sirens.”
