Record summer temperatures set world on course for hottest year ever

European climate monitor says extreme weather will become more ‘intense’ if countries don’t slash emissions.

Summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were the highest ever recorded, making it likely that this year could emerge as Earth’s hottest ever, according to the European Union’s climate change monitor.

Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on Friday followed a season of heatwaves around the world that scientists said were intensified by human-driven climate change.

“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 C3S.

“This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record,” she said.

Heat was exacerbated in 2023 and early 2024 by the cyclical weather phenomenon El Nino, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, though C3S scientist Julien Nicolas said its effects were not as strong as they sometimes are.

Meanwhile, the contrary cyclical cooling phenomenon, known as La Nina, has not yet started, he said.

Conversely, moving against the global trend, regions such as Alaska, the eastern United States, parts of South America, Pakistan and the Sahel desert zone in northern Africa had lower-than-average temperatures in August, said the report.

The planet’s changing climate continued to drive disasters this summer.

In Sudan, flooding from heavy rains last month affected more than 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn country.

Elsewhere, scientists confirmed climate change intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July, killing more than 100 people.

Climate targets missed

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, raising the likelihood and intensity of climate disasters such as droughts, fires and floods.

“The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Burgess.

Governments have targets to reduce their countries’ emissions to try to keep the rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. But the United Nations has said the world is not on track to meet the long-term goals of that deal.

Global temperatures in June and August broke through the level of 1.5C above the pre-industrial average – a key threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change.

Scientists will not consider that threshold to be definitively passed until it has been observed being breached over several decades.

The average level of warming is currently about 1.2C, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

But C3S said the 1.5C level has been passed during 13 of the past 14 months.

In August, the average global temperature at Earth’s surface was 16.82C (62.28F), according to the European monitor, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.