For the 10th consecutive month, Earth last month set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world’s oceans hitting an all-time high for the month, the EU climate agency Copernicus said.
Last month the temperature averaged 14.14°C, exceeding the previous record from 2016 by 0.1°C, Copernicus data showed.
It was 1.68°C warmer than in the late 1800s, the base used for temperatures before the burning of fossil fuels began growing rapidly.
Photo: AFP
Since June last year, the globe has broken heat records each month, with marine heat waves across large areas of the globe’s oceans contributing.
The record-breaking heat during this time was not entirely surprising due to a strong El Nino, a climatic condition that warms the central Pacific and changes global weather patterns.
“But its combination with the non-natural marine heat waves made these records so breathtaking,” Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis said.
With El Nino waning, the margins by which global average temperatures are surpassed each month should go down, Francis said.
Climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-caused climate change.
“The trajectory will not change until concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop rising, which means we must stop burning fossil fuels, stop deforestation and grow our food more sustainably as quickly as possible,” Francis said.
Until then, expect more records to be broken, she said.
The 2015 Paris Agreement set a goal to keep warming at or below 1.5°C since preindustrial times.
Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess said last month’s record-breaking temperature was not as exceptional as some other months in the past year that broke records by wider margins.
“We’ve had record-breaking months that have been even more unusual,” Burgess said, pointing to February and September last year.
The globe has now experienced 12 months with average monthly temperatures 1.58°C above the Paris threshold, data showed.
Last month, global sea surface temperature averaged 21.07°C, the highest monthly value on record and slightly higher than February.
“We need more ambitious global action to ensure that we can get to net zero as soon as possible,” Burgess said.
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