2024 could be the hottest year on record - monitoring
Kyiv • UNN
July 2024 was the second warmest month on record. Copernicus predicts that 2024 could be the hottest year on record if global temperatures do not drop significantly during the year.
2024 may be the hottest year on record, despite the fact that July ended a 13-month series of temperature records, according to data updated on Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Monitoring Service (C3S), which operates with the support of the European Commission and is funded by the EU, UNN writes with reference to DW.
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According to the data, last month was the second warmest on record since 1940, only slightly cooler than July 2023. From June last year to June 2024, every month set a new temperature record for this time of year.
In July, the average global temperature reached 16.91 degrees Celsius, just 0.04 degrees lower than the figure for the same month a year earlier.
But "the overall context hasn't changed, our climate continues to warm," said Samantha Burgess, deputy head of C3S.
According to her, the devastating effects of climate change began long before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach zero.
From January to July, global temperatures were 0.7 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average. This anomaly needs to decline significantly during part of this year to prevent 2024 from becoming hotter than last year. Therefore, it is becoming "increasingly likely that 2024 will be the warmest year on record," Copernicus said.
July 2024 was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than the estimated average temperatures for this month between 1850 and 1900. The Earth experienced two of the hottest days on record, and the average global temperature actually equaled on July 22 and 23, reaching 17.6 degrees.
The temperature of the oceans, which absorb 90 percent of the excess heat caused by human activity, was also almost the highest on record in July: it was 20.88 degrees Celsius, only 0.01 degrees below July 2023. However, Copernicus scientists noted that "air temperatures over the ocean remained unusually high in many regions," despite the transition from the El Niño weather pattern, which contributed to a sharp rise in global temperatures, to its opposite, La Niña, which has a cooling effect.
