New heat record reported by Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme. June was the hottest month on record, beating a recent record set in 2024. The last twelve months have all reached or exceeded the limit of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average.
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On average, over the past 12 months (July 2023 – June 2024), the world has been 1.64°C warmer than in the period from 1850 to 1900, the so-called pre-industrial period. None of the past 12 months has therefore fallen below 1.5°C, the most ambitious target of the Paris Agreement.
June 2024 « marks 13th consecutive month of record global temperatures ” while heat waves were experienced in China, Indiain Mexico, Greece and Saudi Arabia, where more than 1,300 people died during the pilgrimage to Mecca. While the thermometer was close to or below seasonal norms (1991-2020) in Western Europe, as in France, a large part of humanity suffered temperatures above the norms, even exceptional ones.
” A broad and continuing change in our climate »
Of course, this year, in addition to the climate change caused by humans, there has been the El Niño effect, a phenomenon that naturally causes the mercury to rise. Of course, within the framework of the Paris Agreement, it is an average over 20 or 30 years that must be taken into account. But Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus climate change service (C3S), warns that these cascading records are: “ more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a broad and ongoing change in our climate “.
Moreover, the graph speaks for itself. As the decades go by, the annual curves are higher and higher. Carlo Buontempo promises that we are not done with records unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases. In 2022, on the contrary, we have broken a record again.
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