LAST MONTH WAS the hottest August and the hottest month ever recorded globally, tying with July 2023, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate change monitor.  

Ocean temperatures also reached unprecedented levels as western Europe experienced its hottest summer ever. 

Global temperatures reached 1.65°C above pre-industrial levels, marking the return of global temperatures above 1.5°C, the target set in the Paris climate agreement. 

“Combined with record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, these observations show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans,” said Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

“The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world.”

Copernicus observations go back to 1940 but other evidence, such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons, allow scientists to place today’s climate against a much longer historical context.

“Humans haven’t seen temperatures as hot as today for, arguably, at least the last 100,000 years,” Burgess said. 

Global sea surface temperatures also set a new daily high and tied equal-hottest for August, extending a three-month streak of record-breaking warmth across the world’s oceans.

More than 90% of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, sparing land from warming but at severe cost to marine life, reefs and coastal communities.

“The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling,” United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said of the Copernicus report.

Scientists expect records to keep being broken in the months ahead as this “super” El Niño approaches peak intensity around December.

“Climate change makes every El Niño hotter, and until we stop burning coal, oil and gas these record-shattering months will simply keep on coming,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist from Imperial College London.

With reporting from AFP