The EU’s climate monitor has reported that last month marked the hottest June on record worldwide, concluding a six-month period of extreme and destructive weather events ranging from floods to heatwaves.
Naijaonpoint learnt that the global average temperature for last month surpassed the previous June record set in 2023.
This new record was reached at the midpoint of a year characterized by extreme climate conditions.
The scorching heat has affected large areas of the world, including India, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Mexico, in the first half of this year.
Persistent rainfall, a phenomenon linked to a warmer planet by scientists, led to extensive flooding in Kenya, China, Brazil, Afghanistan, Russia, and France.
Wildfires have ravaged land in Greece and Canada, and just last week, Hurricane Beryl became the earliest category-five Atlantic hurricane on record as it swept across several Caribbean islands.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), every month since June 2023 has surpassed its own temperature record, resulting in a 13-month streak of unprecedented global heat.
“This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a large and continuing shift in our climate.
“Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm.
“This was “inevitable” as long as humanity kept adding heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere,” AFP quoted the service director, Carlo Buontempo, saying.
Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at C3S, mentioned that the series of record-breaking temperatures aligned with El Nino, a natural occurrence that leads to increased global temperatures.
“That was part of the factors behind the temperature records, but it was not the only one,” he told AFP.
Water temperatures in the ocean are also reaching unprecedented levels.
Naijaonpoint reports that the largest ever ocean water temperatures in the Atlantic, the Northern Pacific, and the Indian Ocean have played a role in the increasing warmth worldwide.
In June, seawater temperatures reached another significant milestone, marking 15 consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures, a situation Nicolas found “remarkable”.
The oceans span 70% of the Earth’s surface and soak up 90% of the additional heat linked to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to climate change.
“What happens to the ocean surface has an important impact on the air temperature above the surface and global average temperature as well,” he said.
However, the world is about to transition into a La Nina phase, which has a cooling effect.
“We can expect the global (air) temperature to taper down in the next few months.
“If these record (sea surface) temperatures persist, even as La Nina conditions develop that might lead to 2024 being warmer than 2023. But it’s too early to tell,’ said Nicolas.
The average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere from December 2021 to June 2024 reached a record high, according to Copernicus, with temperatures being 1.64 degrees Celsius warmer than before the industrial era.
This does not indicate that the 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperature set by 196 nations in Paris in 2015 has been surpassed, as this target is assessed over a span of decades, not in single years.
However, Copernicus reported that there was an 80 percent probability that the Earth’s yearly average temperatures would temporarily surpass the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold within the next five years.