July 27 (UPI) — July is on pace to be Earth’s hottest month on record as several global heat records have been broken, the European Union’s climate monitor said Thursday.
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that July saw the hottest daily global mean surface air temperatures on record, the hottest three weeks on record, new national temperature records, well above-average global sea surface temperatures and a global average temperature that briefly exceeded a preindustrial threshold.
“The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future,” said World Meteorological Organization’s Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas in a statement. “The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is more urgent than ever before. Climate action is not a luxury but a must.”
July 6 was the hottest global daily average temperature on record, hitting 62.7 degrees after the month began with new records for daily global mean surface air temperature being set for four consecutive days.
Not only has the global mean surface air temperature been at record-breaking highs, but there’s also been a long period of unusually high sea surface temperatures around the world.
“Record-breaking temperatures are part of the trend of drastic increases in global temperatures. Anthropogenic emissions are ultimately the main driver of these rising temperatures,” said Carlo Buontempo, Director of C3S.
Global average sea surface temperatures from mid-May onwards have reached unprecedented levels for the time of the year, according to C3S data.
And those extreme high ocean water temperatures this year are coinciding with El Nino conditions amplifying the warming.
The extreme heat waves in the United States, Europe and Asia would be “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to a report from World Weather Attribution.
Scientists said in that report that without human-induced climate change those heat events would have been extremely rare.
More than 61,000 people in Europe died from excessive heat last summer, according to researchers at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.
