(Paris) June 2024 was the hottest June ever recorded in the world, beating the already exceptional record of June 2023, the European Copernicus Observatory announced on Monday.
After more than a year of uninterrupted monthly records, “the global average temperature over the last 12 months (July 2023-June 2024) is the highest ever recorded,” according to Copernicus, or “1.64°C above the pre-industrial average 1850-1900,” when humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions had not yet warmed the planet.
June 2024 “marks the 13the consecutive month of record global temperatures and the 12the “The temperature has been 1.5°C higher than the averages of the pre-industrial era (1850-1900) for a consecutive month,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), in a press release.
“This is not a statistical incongruity, but it illustrates a significant and ongoing change in our climate,” adds the scientist, at the end of a month marked by severe heatwaves in China, India, Mexico, Greece and Saudi Arabia, where more than 1,300 people died during the pilgrimage to Mecca.
While the thermometer was close to or below seasonal norms (1991-2020) in Western Europe, as in France, a large part of humanity suffered temperatures above the norms, even exceptional ones.
As a result of the June heatwaves, thousands of people had to be evacuated in California following devastating fires, while populations in the Balkans, Pakistan and Egypt suffered from power cuts, stopping essential fans, air conditioners and refrigerators.
“Even if this specific series of extreme measures ends at some point,” with the end of the cyclical El Niño phenomenon that has accentuated the effects of global warming for a year, “new records will be broken as the climate continues to warm” due to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, recalled the director of C3S.
With the expected arrival of the La Niña phenomenon by the end of the year, synonymous with cooler global temperatures, “we can expect global temperatures to decrease in the coming months,” Julien Nicolas, a scientist at C3S, told AFP.
The global temperature at the end of 2024 will depend largely on the evolution of the heat of the oceans, which cover 70% of the planet and whose surface water temperature has remained well above all records for more than a year.
“If these record temperatures persist, despite a development of La Niña, 2024 could be warmer than the 2023 record but it is too early to say,” according to Julien Nicolas.