Record summer temperatures set world on course for hottest year ever

European climate monitor says extreme weather will become more ‘intense’ if countries don’t slash emissions.

Summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were the highest ever recorded, making it likely that this year could emerge as Earth’s hottest ever, according to the European Union’s climate change monitor.

Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on Friday followed a season of heatwaves around the world that scientists said were intensified by human-driven climate change.

“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

“This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record,” she said.

Heat was exacerbated in 2023 and early 2024 by the cyclical weather phenomenon El Nino, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, though C3S scientist Julien Nicolas said its effects were not as strong as they sometimes are.

Meanwhile, the contrary cyclical cooling phenomenon, known as La Nina, has not yet started, he said.

Conversely, moving against the global trend, regions such as Alaska, the eastern United States, parts of South America, Pakistan and the Sahel desert zone in northern Africa had lower-than-average temperatures in August, said the report.

The planet’s changing climate continued to drive disasters this summer.

In Sudan, flooding from heavy rains last month affected more than 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn country.

Elsewhere, scientists confirmed climate change intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July,