The warning lights have been on for weeks but now it is official: July is set to be the hottest month on record – and possibly in 120,000 years.
The record-breaking global mean temperature – the overall reading if you could stick a thermometer at every location on Earth – was confirmed by scientists at the European Copernicus Climate Change Service and World Meteorological Organisation yesterday, based on analysis of international climate and weather datasets.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said yesterday morning in New York. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”
Dr Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University whose separate analysis was first to confirm the new record, told a press briefing on Wednesday that July was also likely the warmest in 120,000 years, stretching back to the interglacial Eemian period when hardwood trees grew in the Arctic and hippos roamed as far north as the Rhine and Thames valleys.
It follows the hottest June on record, and a number of hottest day records which were broken in early July.
The overall mean temperature, which scientists say is around 17C (62.6F), isn’t going to kill anyone but it means that the planet has a “fever”, said Dr Frederike Otto, senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change.
The increase in global heat is manifesting in extreme weather events worldwide. Southern Europe, North Africa and Asia have faced relentless heatwaves since late spring, and in the southern United States, temperatures have regularly topped 37C for weeks.
This story is from the July 28, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the July 28, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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