Hottest April on record extends 11-month streak of record temperatures

The world has just experienced the hottest April on record, continuing an 11-month streak during which each month has set a temperature record. Reuters writes about this with reference to the European Union's climate change monitoring service, UNN reports.

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Every month since June 2023 has been considered the hottest on the planet on record compared to the corresponding month in previous years, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reports in a monthly bulletin.

Including April, the average temperature in the world was the highest in the last 12 months - 1.61 degrees Celsius above the average temperature of the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900.

Some extreme events, including months of record-breaking sea surface temperatures, have prompted scientists to investigate whether human activity has now caused a tipping point in the climate system.

"I think a lot of scientists have been wondering whether changes in the climate system could occur," said Julien Nicolas, C3S Senior Climate Scientist.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. In recent months, the natural phenomenon of El Niño, which heats up surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, has also increased temperatures.

Scientists have already confirmed that climate change caused some extreme weather conditions in April, including a heat wave that opens a new tab in the Sahel that could potentially lead to thousands of deaths.

Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at the University of Newcastle, said the data shows that the world is dangerously close to breaching the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"At what point do we declare that we have lost the battle to keep the temperature below 1.5? My personal opinion is that we have already lost that battle and we really need to think very seriously about keeping the temperature below 2C and cutting our emissions as fast as we can," she said.

At the UN Climate Summit in 2015, countries agreed on a 1.5C target. This is the level that scientists believe will avoid the most harmful effects of warming, such as fatal heat waves, floods, and irreversible loss of ecosystems.

Technically, the 1.5C target has not yet been reached, as it refers to the average global temperature over a decade. But some scientists have said that the target can no longer be realistically achieved and have called on governments to reduce CO2 emissions faster to limit exceeding the target.

The C3S dataset goes back to 1940, and scientists checked it with other data to confirm that last month was the hottest April since the pre-industrial period.