Summer 2024 Was the Hottest Ever Recorded, Says Copernicus Climate Service

The summer of 2024 was the hottest ever recorded on Earth, making this year even more likely to become the hottest ever recorded by mankind, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday.

The broken global records were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from the El Nino phenomenon, continues to increase temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

The meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere – June, July and August – averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius, according to Copernicus. This is 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than the old record of 2023. Copernicus records date back to 1940, but American, British and Japanese records, which start in the mid-19th century, show that the last decade was the warmest since when regular measurements are taken and probably since the last 120,000 years, according to some scientists.

The Augusts of 2024 and 2023 were tied for the warmest in the world at 16.82 degrees Celsius. July marked the first time in more than a year that a new record was not set, just shy of 2023, but because June 2024 was much hotter than June 2023, this summer as a whole was the hottest, said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo.

“What these sober numbers indicate is how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climatologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, who was not involved in the research.

“For 2024 not to be the hottest on record, we need to see a very significant cooling of the landscape over the last few months, which doesn’t seem likely at this stage,” Buontempo said.

According to climatologists, these are not just record numbers, but represent phenomena that affect people.

“All of this translates into more suffering around the world as places like Phoenix begin to feel like a grill stuck in soaring temperatures for longer and longer periods of the year.” , said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environment and climatologist at the University of Michigan.

The Arizona city has had more than 100 days with temperatures of 38 degrees Celsius this year. “With longer and more severe heat waves come more severe droughts in some places and more intense rain and flooding in others. Climate change is becoming too obvious and too costly to ignore.”

While some of last year’s record warmth was driven by El Nino – a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters global weather – this effect has disappeared, showing that the main driver is changes long-term climate change caused by humans through the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said.

“It’s not really surprising that we’re seeing this, this heat wave, that we’re seeing these extreme temperatures. We’re bound to see more,” he warned.