Feel the heat as Earth breaks new record for hottest summer

The summer of 2024 was the hottest ever recorded on Earth, making it even more likely that this year will be the hottest ever recorded by humanity, the European climate service Copernicus reported Friday.

And if that sounds familiar, it’s because the planet’s record-breaking events were set last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from El Niño, continues to increase temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

According to Copernicus, the northern meteorological summer (June, July and August) averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s 0.03 degrees Celsius (0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous record of 2023. Copernicus records go back to 1940, but U.S., British and Japanese records, which begin in the mid-19th century, show that the past decade was the warmest since regular measurements began and probably in about 120,000 years, some scientists say.

August 2024 and 2023 were both the hottest Augusts on record, at 16.82 degrees Celsius (62.27 degrees Fahrenheit). July was the first time in over a year that the world did not set a record, falling just short of 2023, but since June 2024 was much warmer than June 2023, this summer overall was the hottest, Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said.

“These alarming figures show how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, who was not involved in the study.

It’s a tough take because with the high temperatures, the dew point – one of many ways to measure air humidity – was likely at or near record highs this summer for much of the world, Buontempo said.

Until last month, Buontempo, like other climate scientists, wondered whether 2024 would break the record for the warmest year set last year, mainly because August 2023 was much warmer than average. But this August 2024 tied 2023, making Buontempo “pretty sure” that this year will be the warmest on record.

“For 2024 not to become the warmest year on record, we would need to see a very significant cooling of the landscape in recent months, which does not seem likely at this point,” Buontempo said.

With the expected arrival of La Niña (a temporary natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific), the last four months of the year may not be as record-breaking as most of the past year and a half. But temperatures are unlikely to be low enough to prevent 2024 from breaking the annual record, Buontempo said.

These are not just numbers in a record book, but weather phenomena that are harming people, climate scientists said.

“All of this adds up to a worsening situation around the world, as places like Phoenix start to look like a white-hot barbecue for longer and longer periods of the year,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School of Environment and a climate scientist at the University of Michigan. The Arizona city has seen more than 100 days of 100-degree temperatures this year. “Longer, more intense heat waves are accompanied by more severe droughts in some places, and more intense rains and floods in others. Climate change is becoming too obvious and too costly to ignore.”

Jennifer Francis, a climatologist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center on Cape Cod, said there has been a deluge of extreme weather events, heat, flooding, wildfires and high, dangerous winds.

“Like people living in a war zone with the constant noise of bombs and the rattle of guns, we become deaf to what should be alarm bells and sirens announcing air raids,” Francis said in an email.

Although some of last year’s record heat was caused by an El Niño phenomenon (a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that changes climate worldwide), that effect has faded and shows that the main factor is long-term human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said.

“It’s not surprising that we’re seeing this heat wave, these extreme temperatures,” Buontempo said. “We’ll definitely see more of this.”

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