The world has experienced its hottest northern hemisphere summer since record-keeping began, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported in a monthly bulletin that the summer of June to August 2024 surpassed the previous year’s record, making it the warmest ever recorded.
This exceptional heat increases the probability that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.
C3S’ dataset, which extends back to 1940, was cross-checked with other data to confirm that this summer was the hottest since the pre-industrial period of 1850.
“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,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said.
She highlighted that without urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary cause of climate change, extreme weather events will continue to intensify.
The changing climate has continued to fuel disasters throughout the summer. In Sudan, heavy rains in August affected over 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn nation. Scientists also confirmed that climate change is driving severe ongoing droughts in Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which claimed more than 100 lives as it swept through the Philippines, Taiwan, and China in July.
Both human-induced climate change and the El Nino natural weather phenomenon contributed to the record-breaking temperatures earlier in the year. Although Copernicus noted that below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month indicated a shift to the cooler La Nina phase, global sea surface temperatures remained unusually high. August 2024 was hotter than any other August on record, except for 2023.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported in a monthly bulletin that the summer of June to August 2024 surpassed the previous year’s record, making it the warmest ever recorded.
This exceptional heat increases the probability that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.
C3S’ dataset, which extends back to 1940, was cross-checked with other data to confirm that this summer was the hottest since the pre-industrial period of 1850.
“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,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said.
She highlighted that without urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary cause of climate change, extreme weather events will continue to intensify.
The changing climate has continued to fuel disasters throughout the summer. In Sudan, heavy rains in August affected over 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn nation. Scientists also confirmed that climate change is driving severe ongoing droughts in Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which claimed more than 100 lives as it swept through the Philippines, Taiwan, and China in July.
Both human-induced climate change and the El Nino natural weather phenomenon contributed to the record-breaking temperatures earlier in the year. Although Copernicus noted that below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month indicated a shift to the cooler La Nina phase, global sea surface temperatures remained unusually high. August 2024 was hotter than any other August on record, except for 2023.
