“TOO HOT TO HANDLE”
July 2024 was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than the estimated average temperatures for the month during the period 1850-1900, before the world started to rapidly burn fossil fuels.
This has translated into punishing heat for hundreds of millions of people.
The Earth experienced its two hottest days on record with global average temperatures at a virtual tie on July 22 and 23 reaching 17.6 degrees Celsius, C3S said.
The Mediterranean was gripped by a heatwave scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming as China and Japan sweated through their hottest July on record.
Record-breaking rainfall pummelled Pakistan, wildfires ravaged western US states and Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction as it swept from the Caribbean to the southeast of the United States.
Temperatures for the oceans, which absorb 90 per cent of the excess heat caused by human activities, were also the second warmest on record for the month of July.
Average sea surface temperatures were 20.88 degrees Celsius last month, only 0.01 degree Celsius below July 2023.
This marked the end of a 15-month period of tumbling heat records for the oceans.
However, scientists at C3S noted that “air temperatures over the ocean remained unusually high over many regions” despite a swing from the El Nino weather pattern that helped fuel a spike in global temperatures to its opposite La Nina, which has a cooling effect.
On Wednesday, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo reflected on a year of “widespread, intense and extended heatwaves”.
“This is becoming too hot to handle,” she said.
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