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The world has experienced its hottest northern hemisphere summer on record, as a swath of countries baked in stifling heat, putting 2024 firmly on course to be the warmest on the books, scientists said.
The average temperature globally for the June to August period was 16.8C, 0.69C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.5C above 1850-1900 pre-industrial levels, the Copernicus earth observation agency said.
A temporary rise of 1.5C in the average global temperature is distinct from the Paris Agreement goal of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5C.
But the agency forecast more temperature-related extreme events as the world struggles to limit global warming. Wildfires ripped through parts of Brazil, Canada, Greece and other countries in recent months, while officials warned of soaring heat-related deaths.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus, said the world had “experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record”.
“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,” she added.
The boreal summer of 2023 was the previously hottest season on the books, while 2023 was also the hottest year on record.
Copernicus said the global average temperature anomaly for the January to August period this year was 0.70C above the 1991-2020 average and 0.23C warmer than the same months in 2023.
This average anomaly would need to drop by at least 0.30C in the remaining months of the year for 2024 not to be warmer than 2023, scientists said, adding that such a fall had never been recorded.
Last month tied with 2023 as the hottest August on record, with a surface air temperature of 16.82C, 1.51C above the pre-industrial level. The global average temperature for the past 12 months of 15.13C was the highest on the books for any 12-month period, hitting 1.64C above the pre-industrial average.
The fastest warming continent, Europe had its hottest summer on record at 20.34C, and second-hottest August after 2022, with temperatures above average in southern and eastern Europe.
But a more volatile jet stream, meant northwestern parts of the UK and Ireland, as well as southern Norway, were cooler than usual.
The UK Met Office noted earlier this week that despite the long-term warming trend as a result of climate change, the UK’s “natural variability means that we’ll still experience cooler than average summers at times”.
The summer season was also predominantly wetter than average in western and northern Europe, where the warmer air in parts carried more moisture.
Elsewhere in the world, temperatures were most above the August average in eastern Antarctica, Texas, Mexico, Canada, north-east Africa, Iran, China, Japan and Australia.
Sea surface temperatures were below average in the equatorial Pacific, indicating that the naturally occurring La Niña weather phenomenon is developing, which typically leads to a cooling of sea and surface temperatures. Scientists have also noted colder than average temperatures in the Atlantic in July and August, in a linked phenomenon.
But the scientists warned overall that sea surface temperatures “remained unusually high over many regions”, while the average sea surface temperature for August was the second-highest on record at 20.91C, just below August 2023.
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