The summer of 2024 has officially been recorded as the world’s hottest northern hemisphere summer since records began, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). This period, spanning from June to August, surpassed the previous record set last summer, marking a significant milestone in global temperature records.
Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of C3S, highlighted the severity of the situation, noting that the globe experienced its hottest June and August, along with the hottest single day on record, during these three months. The persistent rise in temperatures underscores the growing impact of global warming and intensifies the urgency for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Burgess emphasized that without significant reductions in emissions, extreme weather events will continue to become more intense.
The high temperatures this summer have had widespread and devastating effects. In Sudan, severe flooding from heavy rains in August affected more than 300,000 people and exacerbated the cholera outbreak in the region. Meanwhile, the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia faced a severe drought, also attributed to climate change. In Asia, Typhoon Gaemi, intensified by climate change, ravaged the Philippines, Taiwan, and China, resulting in over 100 deaths.
These climate disasters are not solely due to human-induced climate change but also linked to the El Niño phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This year, El Niño contributed to pushing global temperatures to new highs. Despite a shift towards La Niña, which typically brings cooler conditions, global sea surface temperatures remained unusually high in August, registering higher than in any previous August except for 2023.
The C3S dataset, which dates back to 1940, corroborates these findings with other data, confirming that this summer was the hottest since the pre-industrial period of 1850】. The continuation of such extreme temperatures highlights the urgent need for global action to mitigate climate change and its effects on the planet.
