Hot, hotter, hottest.
July will end up as the Earth’s hottest month on record, and quite possibly the hottest single month in some 120,000 years, scientists reported Thursday.
“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,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday.
The report was published by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations’ weather agency. Final data will be available in early August.
July has seen deadly, record-breaking heat waves across much of North America, Asia and Europe, along with devastating heat-driven wildfires in southern Europe and in Canada. The heat has also had major impacts on people’s health, the environment and economies, the WMO said in a statement.
“According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded; the three hottest days on record; and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of year,” Guterres told journalists at UN headquarters in New York.
The global average temperature for the first 23 days of July was 62.51 degrees, breaking the record of 61.93 degrees, which was set in July 2019.
“To say that global temperatures in July have been exceptional is an understatement,” tweeted Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth on Thursday. “The month is on track to shatter the prior July record by a massive margin, and be the warmest month in terms of both absolute temperatures and anomalies.”
Hausfather also said that 2023 will “more likely than not” be the warmest year on record.
Will July 2023 be the hottest month in 120,000 years?
“We may have to go back thousands if not tens of thousands of years to find similarly warm conditions on our planet,” Leipzig University climate scientist Karsten Haustein told reporters at a media briefing this week. In fact, based on climate data obtained from ice cores, tree rings and other sources, it could be the hottest month in some 120,000 years, he said.
Haustein did his own calculations and also found that July 2023 would be the hottest single month on record, noting that “we are in absolutely new record territory.”
Scientists say that such shattering of heat records is a harbinger for future climate-altering changes as the planet warms due to the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Those changes go beyond just prolonged heat waves and include more flooding, longer-burning wildfires and extreme weather events that put many people at risk.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” Guterres told reporters. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
