August hottest month ever recorded

HOT WATER: More than 90% of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, sparing land, but at a severe cost to marine life

The EU’s climate monitor yesterday said that last month was the hottest single month ever recorded globally, with ocean temperatures also reaching unprecedented highs as western Europe capped its warmest summer.

In response to the assessment by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the UN said that until humanity weaned off fossil fuels, the planet would only push deeper into uncharted territory.

Copernicus observations go back to 1940, but other evidence — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — allow scientists to place today’s climate against a much longer historical context.

People sit on the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris on June 20.

Photo: AFP

“Humans haven’t seen temperatures as hot as today for, arguably, at least the last 100,000 years,” European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts strategic lead for climate Samantha Burgess said.

The center oversees Copernicus.

Global average air temperatures last month were 16.96°C, Copernicus said — surpassing by 0.01°C the previous all-time monthly record set in July 2023.

Copernicus said it considered the two months joint-highest given the narrow difference.

Scientists say that human activity — primarily the burning of coal, oil and gas — has warmed the planet by about 1.4°C since preindustrial times and increased the severity and likelihood of extreme weather.

Yet heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions rose to new highs last year.

“The evidence is irrefutable: This is the spiraling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fueling,” UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said of the Copernicus report.

Global sea surface temperatures also set a new daily high and tied equal-hottest for August, extending a three-month streak of record-breaking warmth across the world’s oceans.

More than 90 percent of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, sparing land from warming, but at severe cost to marine life, reefs and coastal communities.

Records tumbled in overheated basins such as the Atlantic and Mediterranean and also the tropical Pacific, where the strongest El Nino weather pattern in the modern era is fast accumulating strength.

These events are marked by unusually warm Pacific waters but raise the odds of wild weather thousands of miles away, from floods in Peru to droughts in Africa and wildfires in Australia.

The warmer phase of a natural climate cycle, El Nino episodes usually deliver a spike in global temperatures already elevated by long-term background warming.

Scientists expect records to keep falling in the months ahead as this “super” El Nino approaches peak intensity around December and for next year — and maybe even this year — to become the hottest years ever observed.

“Climate change makes every El Nino hotter, and until we stop burning coal, oil, and gas these record-shattering months will simply keep on coming,” Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto said.

Last month also “marked the end of western Europe’s warmest summer” that surpassed the long-standing record set in 2003, Copernicus said.

Elsewhere, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday said the contiguous US has endured its hottest summer on record.

Regions home to about 900 million people lived through the hottest July ever observed, an analysis of Copernicus data showed.

“We’ve had an exceptional summer — not only in Europe, but other parts of the world where records that have existed for close to a century have fallen,” Burgess said.

The climate would “continue to get more extreme unless we turn off the tap to global emissions,” she added.