- According to Copernicus, which collects climate data, in June of this year the record has been broken for the thirteenth consecutive month. The target of the 1.5°C agreed in the Paris Agreement has not been met and they say that if the situation does not change, further negative records could be foreseen.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service publishes a global climate newsletter every month. Since they began collecting records, they have concluded that this is the hottest June of this year. It is the thirteenth consecutive month in which the highest temperature is recorded, 0.14°C more than in June last year. The newsletter explains that the ERA5 tool, “which uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world, has been used to obtain these data.”
According to the data collected, one of the objectives agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement is not met. In that agreement, States agreed that the average long-term world surface temperature should be below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and should be limited to around 1.5°C, according to United Nations Climate Change.
The average world surface temperature of the last twelve months is 1.64ºC warmer than at pre-industrial levels and 0.76°C warmer than in the period 1991-2020. These are the highest figures ever recorded, and for the second consecutive month they have exceeded 1.5°C this June.
The Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Andrea Celeste Saulo, does not lose hope of achieving this goal. “Temporary non-compliance does not mean that the 1.5°C target is continuously lost, as this target corresponds to long-term warming,” UN News said.
Data collected by the ERA5 tool indicate that the main areas with above average temperatures have been South-East Europe, Turkey, East Canada, Western EE.UU. Mexico, Brazil, North Siberia, North Africa, and West Antarctica.
Floods, fires and a hurricane
The newsletter published by Copernicus covers the extraordinary weather events of June 2024. At European level, Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland have been affected by the heavy rains that have affected several parts of Europe. Mention is also made of the serious fires in South America and northeast Russia, as well as Hurricane Beryl.
Copernicus has stressed that it can be predicted that there will be new negative records in the future and that the increase in temperatures will be “inevitable” if “we do not stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the ocean”.