With just a few days to go until the start of autumn, we can already conclude that the summer of 2024 has set a new global heat record, reports the European agency Copernicus. A peak unprecedented since at least the pre-industrial era that has left its mark all over the planet.
The records are piling up
PHOTO GIANNIS PAPANIKOS, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
A grasshopper stands on the dry bed of Lake Pikrolímni in Mikrokampos, a village in northern Greece, in late August.
“In the last three months of 2024, the world experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest northern summer on record. This series of record-breaking temperatures increases the likelihood that 2024 will be the hottest year on record,” said Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Climate Change Service at Copernicus. “The extreme temperatures seen this summer will only intensify, with even more devastating consequences for people and the planet, unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.
Europe hit hard
In its latest report released Thursday, Copernicus said the global average temperature for June, July and August was the highest on record, 0.69°C above the average for those three months between 1991 and 2020. The new mark slightly exceeds the previous record set in 2023 (0.66°C). The summer season was even warmer in Europe, with the average temperature 1.54°C above the 1991-2020 summer average, shattering the 2022 record of 1.34°C. Copernicus said its analyses are based on “billions of data points collected from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.”
A record month of August
PHOTO SASA DJORDJEVIC, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In Serbia, in mid-August, cows and horses are lying in the middle of a heat wave.
In August, the global average temperature on Earth was 16.82 °C, 0.71 °C above the average for that month between 1991 and 2020. This mark equals the record set in August 2023. Interestingly, 13 of the last 14 months ended with average temperatures more than 1.5 °C above the level recorded at the beginning of the pre-industrial era. The year 2024 is likely to surpass 2023, considered the warmest year on record and possibly the warmest in 120,000 years, climatologists estimate. Scientists are able to compare modern data with those obtained from ice cores or tree rings.
Impacts everywhere
PHOTO AMEL EMRIC, REUTERS ARCHIVES
A man splashes water on himself to try to cool down during a heatwave in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The impacts of these extreme temperatures have been felt in every region of the globe. In the United States and Mexico, the deadly heat wave observed last June was made 35 times more likely due to climate change, concludes the World Weather Attribution network. According to Environment Canada, the heat wave that occurred in Quebec in mid-June was 2 to 10 times more likely due to human influence on the climate. Last spring, an unprecedented heat wave closed thousands of schools in Asia. In Mecca, temperatures above 50 °C killed more than 1,000 pilgrims during their passage through the holy city.
Emissions on the rise
“Our best guess is that all of this warming is due to human activity,” American climatologist Zeke Hausfather recently reported on Platform X. “Natural factors such as changes in solar output and volcanoes would have had only minimal effects on the climate over the past century.” Pollutant emissions have thus inflated the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, which stood at 422.78 parts per million (ppm) on September 3, while it did not exceed 310 ppm in the early 1950s. Even though it constitutes only a tiny part of the composition of the atmosphere, CO2 is the main greenhouse gas, which helps retain some of the heat coming from the Sun.