Summer of 2024 Recorded as the Hottest on Record, Says EU Climate Change Monitor

By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS – According to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service, the world has just experienced its warmest northern hemisphere summer on record, as global warming continues to escalate.

The boreal summer stretching from June to August this year surpassed last summer to become the hottest on record, as reported in a monthly bulletin by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

This extraordinary heat raises the possibility that 2024 could surpass 2023 as the hottest year recorded so far.

"Over the past three months, the globe has endured the hottest June and August, alongside the hottest day ever recorded, marking the hottest boreal summer to date," stated Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

Burgess emphasized that unless countries take swift action to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming, extreme weather phenomena are only likely to intensify. The primary driver of climate change remains greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

This summer’s altered climate continued to trigger disasters. In Sudan, severe flooding caused by heavy rains affected over 300,000 individuals and led to a cholera outbreak amid ongoing conflict in the region.

In addition, scientists have confirmed that climate change is contributing to a severe drought affecting the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Typhoon Gaemi, which struck the Philippines, Taiwan, and China in July, intensified due to these changing conditions and resulted in over 100 fatalities.

Record high temperatures earlier in the year were attributed to both human-induced climate change and the El Niño phenomenon, which warms the surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Recently, Copernicus observed below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, indicating a potential shift towards La Niña, which serves as El Niño’s cooler counterpart.

Despite this shift, global sea surface temperatures remained unusually high, with average temperatures in August exceeding those of any other August except for 2023.

C3S’s dataset, which dates back to 1940, corroborates that this past summer was the hottest since the mid-19th century during the pre-industrial period.