According to Copernicus, 2024 will see the hottest June in history

“This is much more than a statistical quirk and highlights a significant and ongoing change in our climate,” declared Carlo Buontempo, the service’s director, after a month of intense heat waves that hit Mexico, China, Greece and Saudi Arabia. More than 1,300 people during a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Incessant rainA phenomenon that scientists have also linked to global warming, which led to major floods Brazil, China, Kenya, Afghanistan, Russia and France. In early July, Hurricane Beryl devastated several Caribbean islands and became the earliest Category Five Atlantic hurricane on record.

“Even if this particular series of extremes ends at some point, we are set to see new records broken as the climate continues to warm,” Buontempo said. Persistent temperature records coincide with El NiñoA natural cyclical phenomenon of warming of water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which contributes to increasing average global temperatures.

“This was one of the factors explaining the temperature record, but not the only one,” declared C3S scientist Julian Nicholas. Ocean temperatures also reached new highs, with record sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, North Pacific and Indian Oceans as heat increased across the planet. In June, sea surface temperatures reached another milestone: New high for 15 consecutive months, a fact which Nichols described as “shocking”.

Oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface and Absorbs 90% of excess heat Related to rising greenhouse gas emissions. “What happens at the surface of the oceans has a big impact on the air temperature above the surface and also on the global average temperature,” Nichols said.

However, the world is about to enter a La Niña phase, which has a Cooling Effectso “we can expect global (air) temperatures to cool in the coming months,” he indicated. “If these record (sea surface) temperatures continue, even if La Niña conditions develop, 2024 could be hotter than 2023. But it’s too early to tell,” he added.

According to Copernicus, after more than a year of continuous monthly records, “the average global (air) temperature of the last 12 months (July 2023 – June 2024) is the highest ever recorded.” Which means it is “1.64 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900, when humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions had not yet warmed the planet.” This does not mean that The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius Compared to the pre-industrial era, because it is measured in decades rather than individual years.

However, last month Copernicus said that There was an 80% chance that the average annual temperature The Earth’s temperature will at least temporarily cross the 1.5 ºC threshold during the next five years.