July 2023 is set to upend previous heat benchmarks, UN Secretary General António Guterres said on Thursday after scientists said it was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also said in a joint statement it was “extremely likely” July 2023 would break the record.
“We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board,” Guterres said in New York.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” he told reporters, adding “the era of global boiling has arrived”.
The effects of July’s heat have been seen across the world. Thousands of tourists fled wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes, and many more suffered baking heat across the US Southwest. Temperatures in a northwest China township soared as high as 52.2C (126F), breaking the national record.
While the WMO would not call the record outright, instead waiting until the availability of all finalised data in August, an analysis by Germany’s Leipzig University released on Thursday found that July 2023 would clinch the record.
This month’s mean global temperature is projected to be atleast 0.2C (0.4F) warmer than July 2019, the former hottest inthe 174-year observational record, according to EU data.The margin of difference between now and July 2019 is “sosubstantial that we can already say with absolute certainty thatit is going to be the warmest July”, Leipzig climate scientistKarsten Haustein said.
July 2023 is estimated to be roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius(2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial mean. The WMO hasconfirmed that the first three weeks of July have been thewarmest on record.
Commenting on the pattern, Michael Mann, a climate scientistat the University of Pennsylvania, said it was clear by mid-Julythat it was going to be a record warm month, and provided an“indicator of a planet that will continue to warm as long as weburn fossil fuels”.
Normally, the global mean temperature for July is around 16C(61F), inclusive of the Southern Hemisphere winter. But thisJuly it has surged to around 17C (63F).What’s more, “we may have to go back thousands if not tens ofthousands of years to find similarly warm conditions on ourplanet”, Haustein said. Early, less fine-tuned climate records —gathered from things like ice cores and tree rings — suggest theEarth has not been this hot in 120,000 years.
Haustein’s analysis is based on preliminary temperature dataand weather models, including forecast temperatures through theend of this month, but validated by unaffiliated scientists.
“The result is confirmed by several independent datasetscombining measurements in the ocean and over land. It isstatistically robust,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientistat Leeds University in Britain.
Sweltering temperatures have affected swathes of the planet.While night-time is typically cooler in the desert, Death Valleyin the U.S. state of California saw the hottest night everrecorded globally this month.
Canadian wildfires burned at an unprecedented pace. AndFrance, Spain, Germany and Poland sizzled under a majorheatwave, with the mercury climbing into the mid-40s on theItalian island of Sicily, part of which is engulfed in flames.Marine heatwaves have unfolded along coastlines from Florida toAustralia, raising concerns about coral reef die-off.Even one of the coldest places on Earth - Antarctica - isfeeling the heat. Sea ice is currently at a record low in theSouthern Hemisphere’s winter - the time when ice should soon bereaching its maximum extent.
Meanwhile, record rainfall and floods have deluged South Korea,Japan, India and Pakistan.
“Global mean temperature (itself) doesn’t kill anyone,” saidFriederike Otto, a scientist with the Grantham Institute forClimate Change in London. “But a ‘hottest July ever’ manifestsin extreme weather events around the globe.”The planet is in the early stages of an El Nino event, borne ofunusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific. El Nino typicallydelivers warmer temperatures around the world, doubling down onthe warming driven by human-caused climate change, whichscientists said this week had played an “absolutelyoverwhelming” role in July’s extreme heatwaves.
While El Nino’s impacts are expected to peak later this yearand into 2024, it “has already started to help boost thetemperatures”, Haustein said.
July is traditionally the hottest month of the year, and theEU said it did not project August would surpass the record setthis month.However, scientists expect 2023 or 2024 will end up as thehottest year in the record books, surpassing 2016.(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London, Ontario; additionalreporting by Ali Withers i
