June was the world’s hottest month on record, far surpassing the 2019 record, according to a study by Copernicus, a European Commission program that studies climate and environmental change.
“June was the world’s hottest month, just over 0.5 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, well above the previous record set in June 2019,” the observatory said.
Temperatures broke records in northwestern Europe, while parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Asia and eastern Australia “were significantly warmer than usual,” notes Copernicus.
On the other hand, it was colder than usual in western Australia, western US and western Russia.
For 15 years, June has been consistently above the averages for the reporting period 1991-2020, but “June 2023 is much higher than others, this is the type of anomaly that we are not used to,” Agence France Presse explained. scientist Julien Nicolas.
The average global temperature in June was 16.51 degrees Celsius, 0.53 degrees above the average for the previous three decades. The previous record in June 2019 was 0.37 degrees.
“The June 2023 record is largely due to the very high temperature of the ocean surface, which is 70% of the surface of the globe,” the scientist explained.
Temperatures reached record highs in May in the Pacific due to the emergence of the El Niño weather phenomenon.
In June, for its part, the North Atlantic was hit by a heat wave at sea, “which surprised many people to a truly unprecedented level,” the expert said.
“Extreme offshore heatwaves” have been measured in the Baltic Sea, as well as around Ireland and the UK, which already confirmed their record June temperatures a few days ago.
The trend continues into July: according to preliminary data from the University of Maine in the US, Tuesday was the hottest day in the world.
Scientists have been warning for months that a record heat wave could hit in 2023 as man-made climate change, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil, warms the atmosphere.
These observations are likely a foretaste of what is to come with the so-called El Niño phenomenon, usually associated with rising temperatures on a global scale, supplemented by the effects of human-induced climate warming.