Global temperature | The end of a sad record

July 2024 will be the second hottest month on record globally, just behind July 2023, narrowly ending a dismal streak of global monthly surface temperature records.

16.91 °C

Make no mistake. The average temperature measured on the planet’s surface last July by the European Copernicus Observatory was only second on record, not because the weather was cool. The average temperature was 0.68°C higher than the average for Julys from 1991 to 2020. “It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s huge,” says Christopher McCray, a climate simulation and analysis specialist at Ouranos. But more importantly, the temperature was just 0.04°C lower than the average for July 2023, the hottest month on record. “July 2024 is not a record in 2024 because 2023 was so exceptional,” says the specialist.

Two suffocating days

While July 2024 was not as hot as last year, two of its days did stand out for historical daily temperature records. The Earth’s surface temperature reached 17.16°C and 17.15°C on July 22 and 23, making them the two hottest days ever recorded, Corpernicus reports, adding that it is impossible to determine with certainty which of these two days ranks first.

13 months

This second place, however, puts an end to a 13-month sequence, which began in May 2023, during which monthly temperature records were broken one after the other, in both winter and summer. Although unusual, such a sequence had also been recorded from 2015 to 2016. Just like now, the planet was then under the influence of the El Niño phenomenon, which is characterized by abnormally high water temperatures in the eastern part of the South Pacific, underlines Copernicus.

A “less” hot future

El Niño, however, is apparently fading to make way for the opposite phenomenon, La Niña, which manifests itself in colder temperatures. But everything is relative. “Accounting for global warming caused by human activity, a La Niña year right now is as warm as an El Niño year in the past,” explains Christopher McCray. The specialist does not expect the coming months to break global temperature records “especially because the months of 2023 will be hard to beat.” “But it is certain that the records that we have set in the last 13 months will be broken,” he says.

And in Quebec?

With temperatures varying across the planet, not all have been affected equally by the increase in temperatures recorded in recent months, says Christopher McCray. But La Belle Province has been particularly hot. The period from July 2023 to June 2024, the period when the global heat record streak was recorded, was also the hottest observed here since 1850, for all locations in the province where this data is recorded. What’s more, with the exception of a few regions of Antarctica, no region in the world has recorded temperatures among the coldest they have ever known.

And now ?

According to Copernicus data, July 2024 was 1.48°C above the average temperature estimated for a July during the period 1850-1900, the pre-industrial reference period. This marks the end of a streak of 12 consecutive months at 1.5°C or more. “With everything we’ve experienced in the last year, it further demonstrates the need to adapt to global warming,” says Christopher McCray, according to whom the impacts of heat are already being felt.