Earth’s streak of 13 consecutive months with a new average heat record came to an end this last July While the El Niño natural weather pattern has declined, European climate agency Copernicus announced on Wednesday.
But July 2024 The country’s average heat barely surpassed that of July last year, and scientists said the end of the record-breaking streak doesn’t change anything about the climate. threat posed by climate change.
“The overall context has not changed,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess in a statement. “Our climate continues to warm.”
Human-caused climate change is causing extreme weather events that are wreaking havoc across the world, with several examples in just the last few weeks. In Cape Town, South Africa, thousands of people were displaced by torrential rain, strong winds, floods and more. A fatal landslide has hit the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Beryl left a huge path of destruction as it set the record for the first category 4 hurricane. And Japanese officials said more than 120 people died in record heat in Tokyo.
These high temperatures were especially unforgiving.
The globe in July 2024 averaged 62.4 degrees Fahrenheit (16.91 degrees Celsius), which is 1.2 degrees (0.68 Celsius) above the 30-year average for the month, according to Copernicus . Temperatures were a small fraction lower than the same period last year.
And the second hottest July and second hottest of any month recorded in the agency’s records, second only to July 2023. Earth also had its two hottest days on recordon July 22 and 23, each averaging about 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.16 degrees Celsius).
During July, the world was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter, by Copernicus’ measurements, than in pre-industrial times. This is close to the warming limit that almost every country in the world agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement: 1.5 degrees.
El Nino – which naturally warms the Pacific Ocean and changes the climate around the world – spurred the 13 months of record heat, said Copernicus senior climate scientist Julien Nicolas. This has come to an end, hence the slight decrease in temperatures in July. La Nina conditions – natural cooling – are not expected until later in the year.
But have still a general warming trend.
“The global picture is not very different from where we were a year ago,” Nicolas said in an interview.
“The fact that global sea surface temperatures are and have been at or near record levels for the past more than a year has been an important contributing factor,” he said. “The main driving force behind this record temperature is also the long-term warming trend that is directly related to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
This includes carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
July temperatures hit certain regions especially hard, including western Canada and the western United States. They baked, with about a third of the US population under warnings at one point to dangerous, record-breaking heat.
In southern and eastern Europe, the Italian health ministry issued its most severe heat warning yet to several cities in southern Europe and the Balkans. Greece was forced to close its biggest cultural attraction, the Acropolis, due to excessive temperatures. Most of France was under heat warnings while the country hosted the Olympics at the end of July.
Most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and eastern Antarctica were also affected, according to Copernicus. Temperatures in Antarctica were well above average, scientists say.
“Things will continue to get worse because we don’t stop doing the things that are making them worse,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was not part of the report.
Schmidt noted that different methodologies or calculations could produce slightly different results, including that July may have even continued the trend. The key takeaway, he said: “Even if the record-breaking streak comes to an end, the forces that are raising temperatures will not stop.
“Does it matter if July is a record or not? No, because what matters, what’s impacting everyone,” Schmidt added, “is the fact that temperatures this year and last year are still much, much higher than they were in the 1980s, than they were in the pre-industrial era. . And we are seeing the impacts of this change.”
People around the world should see no relief in July’s numbers, experts say.
“A lot of attention has been paid to this 13-month streak of global records,” said Nicolas of Copernicus. “But the consequences of climate change have been observed for many years. This started before June 2023 and it’s not going to end because this record streak is ending.”
___
Alexa St. John is a climate solutions reporter for the Associated Press. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Contact her at ast.john@ap.org.
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and areas of coverage funded in AP.org.
