Summer 2024 was Northern Hemisphere's hottest on record

The northern summer of 2024 saw the highest global temperatures ever recorded, beating last year's record and making 2024 likely to be Earth's hottest year yet, according to EU's climate monitor Copernicus.

The global average temperature between June and August was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit). That's 0.69 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average, Copernicus said in a report.

"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 the agency's deputy director, Samantha Burgess, in a monthly bulletin.

The Earth had only just shattered and set the record for the hottest summer and year in 2023.

This extreme weather "will only become more intense," unless nations across the world urgently reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, Burgess said. Emissions caused by the continued burning of fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. 

The August of 2023 and 2024 tied for the hottest Augusts ever recorded, while June of 2024 was far hotter than that of 2023. July 2024 did not set a record.

What does this mean?

"What those sober numbers indicate is how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. 

Elsewhere, scientists confirmed that climate change is causing a severe drought in Sicily and Sardinia. They also say it intensified Typhoon Gaemi which battered the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July, killing over 100 people. 

Separately, China recorded its hottest August in more than six decades, its national weather service said, after enduring a summer of extreme weather and heat waves across much of its north and west.

Chinese weather authorities had also said July was the country's hottest month since records began, state media reported. 

mk/nm (AP, AFP, Reuters)