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Global #temperatures between June & Aug were 1.5°C (2.7°F) above the preindustrial average, the #CopernicusClimateChangeService said Friday — just edging out the previous record set last summer. The sweltering season reached its apex in late July, when #Copernicus’s sophisticated #temperature analysis program detected the 4 hottest days ever recorded.

#temperatures for the YTD have far exceeded anything in the agency’s >80yrs of recordkeeping, making it all but certain that 2024 will be the hottest year known to #science.
To #Copernicus dir Carlo Buontempo, the onslaught…is sobering but not surprising. #Humanity continues to burn #FossilFuels at an ever-increasing pace & the concentration of #CarbonDioxide in the #atmosphere is higher than the world has seen in ~3M yrs, acc/to the #UN Intergovernmental Panel on #ClimateChange.

“Unless we limit #GreenhouseGases we will only see an exacerbation of these #temperatures,” Buontempo said.

This summer came on the heels of an unprecedented year-long stretch in which #Earth’s #temperature repeatedly met or exceeded 1.5°C above the preindustrial average — a threshold #science says the world cannot surpass if it hopes to avoid the worst consequences of #ClimateChange.

The scorching conditions were the product of a complex cocktail of #HumanCausedClimateChange & a strong #ElNiño event — a natural phenomenon characterized by warm #temperatures in the #Pacific #Ocean.

Though this El Niño was declared over in June, huge amounts of #energy remained trapped in the #Earth system, Buontempo said, fueling the summer’s extraordinary temperatures.

#ExtremeWeather #Climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #Copernicus #FossilFuels #CarbonDioxide #atmosphere #science

The consequences were felt by people on every continent…. #Wildfires fueled by #heat & #drought raged through #Brazil’s #Pantanal, a vital #wetland known to store vast amounts of #carbon. A turbocharged #monsoon triggered #landslides that killed hundreds of people in #India’s #Kerala state. The #Atlantic #Ocean saw its earliest Category 5 #hurricane on record, while deadly #floods have wreaked havoc from #Italy to #Pakistan to #Nigeria to #China.

Nearly 7,000 weather stations in the #UnitedStates broke daily #temperature records June 1 – Aug 31, acc/to #NOAA. The #heat has been blamed for dozens of #fatalities, including those of a motorcyclist riding in Death Valley, an infant on a boat trip in Arizona & a California man who collapsed inside his un-air-conditioned home. In MaricopaCounty, #Arizona —one of the few jurisdictions to methodically track & report the problem— ofcls have attributed ≥177 deaths this year to heat-related causes.

Some of the most unusual #heat this summer occurred in #Antarctica, where plumes of warm air disrupted the deep freeze of the 6-month #PolarNight. #Temperatures on the continent spiked about 28°C (50°F) above usual levels, & the surrounding #SeaIce shrank to nearly unprecedented lows.

The changes in Antarctica are especially eye-opening, Buontempo said, because the region has historically been isolated from the rest of the warming #planet by a strong polar vortex & the swirling Southern Ocean.

But since 2023, the extent of sea ice around #Antarctica has been about 1M to 2M square kilometers less than in any year since satellite observations began.

“This is very different from what we have seen in the past,” Buontempo said. “Even people working on #SeaIce are puzzled by the extent & the rapidity of the decline.”

When #Earth’s 4 hottest days were recorded in July, #climate scientist #JohanRockström told The Post that the planet was probably the warmest it has been since the last ice age began >100k years ago. Climate clues contained in ice cores, lake sediments & tree rings show that global #temperatures are shifting out of the range they’ve occupied for most of human history.

“We’re scratching 1.5 [degrees above preindustrial], & we’ve experienced how it hurts the #economy, #people & #societies across the entire world,” said Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for #Climate Impact Research.

“But within five to 10 years ... what we’re experiencing right now will be looked back upon as a mild year,” he added. “We are inevitably in for a rough ride.”