The worrying trend hasn’t changed despite a temporary break from July’s heat waves that broke records: The European Union’s climate agency indicates that 2024 is getting closer to being the hottest year ever recorded.
Only little colder than July 2023, last month was the second warmest on record dating back to 1940, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
Every month exceeded its own record high for the season between June 2023 and June 2024.
“The record-breaking heat wave has ended, albeit very narrowly,” Samantha Burgess, C3S deputy director, stated.
Notably, C3S’s monthly bulletin states that the average worldwide temperature for the previous month was 16.91 degrees Celsius—just 0.04 degrees Celsius below July 2023.
but “the overall situation hasn’t changed, climate crisis is deepening,” Burgess stated.
“The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero,” she added.
Global temperatures from January to July were 0.70C higher than the average for the period from 1991 to 2020.
In order for 2024 to not be hotter than 2023, this irregularity would need to drastically decrease for the remainder of the year, “making it increasingly likely that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record,” according to C3S.
It should be noted that, prior to the world’s rapid burning of fossil fuels, July 2024 was 1.48C warmer than the month’s estimated average temperature for the period 1850–1900.
For hundreds of millions of people, the heat has become intolerable as a result.
According to C3S researchers, several regions of the world experienced abnormally high ocean air temperatures even while the transition from El Niño to La Niña was taking place.
Secretary-General Celeste Saulo of the World Meteorological Organization looked back on a year marked by “widespread, intense, and extended heatwaves” on Wednesday.
She remarked, “This is getting too hot to handle.”
