Heat waves, droughts and forest fires have plagued Asia, Africa, Europe and North America in the past three months. The headlines about how it has hit economies, ecosystems and human health have replaced each other.
Now the results are in: The global average temperature for the summer months was 16.77 degrees, shows new statistics from Copernicus. In this context, it is a huge increase from the last record summer in 2019, when the corresponding figure was 16.48 degrees.
Record over 120,000 years
The summer heat is the highest since measurements began, but analyzes of annual rings on trees and drill cores of old ice indicate that the record may be greater than that, according to TT.
– The three months we have just experienced are the warmest in about 120,000 years, says Samantha Burgess, deputy director at Copernicus, to the AFP news agency.
May be the hottest year
After the first eight months of the year, 2023 is currently the second warmest year on record, just behind the record year 2016. According to Copernicus, the reason for the rising trend is mainly human emissions of greenhouse gases.
But this year’s record highs are also linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has given the global average temperature an extra boost.