Temperature Record Streak Ends ‘by A Whisker’ In July

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The global average temperature for July ended a streak of 13 monthly records by a “whisker”, as climate scientists warned that 2024 was still on track to be the hottest year.

July was the second-warmest month on record at 16.91C, the latest data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service showed, just 0.04C lower than the previous high set in July 2023.

The rise in the July global average temperature was 1.48C above the pre-industrial era, before human activity began to warm the planet, marking the first month in a year that had not breached the key threshold of 1.5C.

But it was also the month when the Earth experienced its two hottest days in the European observation agency’s records, on July 22 and 23. For the year to date, January to July was 0.27C warmer than the same period last year, when the current annual record was set.

“The streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker”, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S. “The overall context hasn’t changed, our climate continues to warm.”

“The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero,” she noted. Emissions rose last year, while the UN body of scientists says they must be cut by 43 per cent by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C.

After 15-months of consecutive records, sea surface temperature levels also plateaued at high levels. Oceans had their second-warmest July, though the difference was marginal at only one 100th of a degree cooler than July 2023 — similar to the level of uncertainty in the data.

This is consistent with the switch from the naturally occurring so-called El Niño warming phenomenon to the cooling La Niña cycle in the equatorial Pacific, which is expected to take over in coming months.

“The end of record-breaking monthly temperatures is not cause for celebration”, said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at Grantham Institute. “Even without El Niño, the world continues to experience incredibly dangerous levels of heat.”

Although unusual, a similar length streak was observed during 2015-16, a particularly strong El Niño event, when 15 consecutive months set a new record for the respective month of the year.

However, there would need to be a quite significant drop in temperatures during the remaining months of 2024, for the annual average to fall below that of 2023, which Copernicus scientists said was increasingly unlikely.

Among the regions, Europe experienced its second-warmest July, with Mediterranean countries in particular suffering extreme heat. The continent was 1.49C warmer than its long-term average, a much higher anomaly than the 0.68C above 1991-2020 levels observed globally.

“The planet has heated by about 1.3C since humans first started burning oil, gas and coal,” estimated Otto, a co-founder of the World Weather Attribution research group. “However, some places are heating faster than the global average, including Europe.”

A study by World Weather Attribution found that the persistent July heat across Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco, where temperatures above 40C have become the norm, would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Outside Europe, Copernicus said July temperatures were above average in the western region of the US and eastern Canada, most areas in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and eastern Antarctica.

Wetter than usual regions included eastern Asia and southern and central North America, with much rainfall linked to Hurricane Beryl, which swept the Caribbean and Mexican coasts before reaching Texas. Forecasters had predicted that hurricanes would be worsened by La Niña phenomenon this season.

This week, the deluge from Tropical Storm Debby, downgraded from a category one hurricane after it made landfall on Monday, led to a state of emergency being declared in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina.

On the Korean peninsula last week, heavy rainfall swamped 4,100 homes and nearly 3,000 hectares of farmland in North Korea, causing an unsubstantiated number of deaths.