July 2023 is set to upend previous heat benchmarks, U.N. Secretary-general António Guterres said on Thursday after scientists said it was on track to be the world's hottest month on record.
The U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service also said in a joint statement it was "extremely likely" July 2023 would break the record.
"We don't have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board," Guterres said in New York.
"Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning," he told reporters, adding "the era of global boiling has arrived".
The effects of July's heat have been seen across the world. Thousands of tourists fled wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes, and many more suffered baking heat across the U.S. Southwest. Temperatures in a northwest China township soared as high as 52.2C (126F), breaking the national record.
While the WMO would not call the record outright, instead waiting until the availability of all finalised data in August, an analysis by Germany's Leipzig University released on Thursday found that July 2023 would clinch the record.
This month’s mean global temperature is projected to be at least 0.2C (0.4F) warmer than July 2019, the former hottest in the 174-year observational record, according to EU data.
The margin of difference between now and July 2019 is “so substantial that we can already say with absolute certainty that it is going to be the warmest July”, Leipzig climate scientist Karsten Haustein said.
July 2023 is estimated to be roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial mean. The WMO has confirmed that the first three weeks of July have been the warmest on record.
Commenting on the pattern, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was clear by mid-July that it was going to be a record warm month, and provided an "indicator of a planet that will continue to warm as long as we burn fossil fuels".
Normally, the global mean temperature for July is around 16C (61F), inclusive of the Southern Hemisphere winter. But this July it has surged to around 17C (63F).
What’s more, “we may have to go back thousands if not tens of thousands of years to find similarly warm conditions on our planet”, Haustein said. Early, less fine-tuned climate records — gathered from things like ice cores and tree rings — suggest the Earth has not been this hot in 120,000 years.
Haustein's analysis is based on preliminary temperature data and weather models, including forecast temperatures through the end of this month, but validated by unaffiliated scientists.
"The result is confirmed by several independent datasets combining measurements in the ocean and over land. It is statistically robust," said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at Leeds University in Britain.
Sweltering temperatures have affected swathes of the planet. While night-time is typically cooler in the desert, Death Valley in the U.S. state of California saw the hottest night ever recorded globally this month.
Canadian wildfires burned at an unprecedented pace. And France, Spain, Germany and Poland sizzled under a major heatwave, with the mercury climbing into the mid-40s on the Italian island of Sicily, part of which is engulfed in flames.
Marine heatwaves have unfolded along coastlines from Florida to Australia, raising concerns about coral reef die-off.
Even one of the coldest places on Earth - Antarctica - is feeling the heat. Sea ice is currently at a record low in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter - the time when ice should soon be reaching its maximum extent.
Meanwhile, record rainfall and floods have deluged South Korea, Japan, India and Pakistan.
"Global mean temperature (itself) doesn't kill anyone," said Friederike Otto, a scientist with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change in London. "But a 'hottest July ever' manifests in extreme weather events around the globe."
The planet is in the early stages of an El Nino event, borne of unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific. El Nino typically delivers warmer temperatures around the world, doubling down on the warming driven by human-caused climate change, which scientists said this week had played an "absolutely overwhelming" role in July’s extreme heatwaves.
While El Nino’s impacts are expected to peak later this year and into 2024, it “has already started to help boost the temperatures”, Haustein said.
July is traditionally the hottest month of the year, and the EU said it did not project August would surpass the record set this month.
However, scientists expect 2023 or 2024 will end up as the hottest year in the record books, surpassing 2016.
© Thomson Reuters 2023.
30 Comments
Ricky Kaminski13
It’s what the self appointed ‘saviors’ want to do that worries me more than the heatwaves, who will only serve to add fuel to the fire. A sense of panic and doom puts us into a psychological state that doesn’t exactly encourage rational thinking nor cooperation. We will set on each other before the climate gets us. Dormant demons are being awoken. Keep your calm heads about you good people. Tread very carefully.
Newgirlintown
Absolutely terrifying and only a small taste of what’s to come unfortunately. This is nothing compared to what will happen in the future.
PTownsend
And those willing to accept what most scientists have been cautioning accept that 'climate change is here', but the global petrochemical titans, the politicians they control and their media continue to deny that climate change is man-made, and continue to say carry on burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, keep consuming as much as you want, and keep raising large herds of animals.
The planet continues to get hotter, while the petrochemical masters, their politicians and their media find more ways to distract from the seriousness of the problems, instead of facing the issues, they manufacture outrage for their true-believing followers.
dan
Not so much as stop oil but stop coal would be the way ...and gas fired power stations.
Hydro geo thermal needs massive expansion and is not happening in Japan coz of the inept government full of fossil oji san.
Rodney
Time to invest in ice cream shops.
1glenn
While headlines and news articles around the Globe are talking about the link between man made global warming and the current and future heat waves, the principle right-wing propaganda outlet over here, Fox News, is headlining that there is no link between man made global warming and the heat spells, and the Republican "think tanks" are preparing initiatives to reverse the steps taken during the Biden Administration to fight global warming, the next time they are in control of the federal government.
My Dad's favorite saying was "The truth is stranger than fiction." How true. If someone made this story up, I would think they were smoking hallucinogenics. Who in their right mind would still deny the link between man's activities and global warming, and who in their right mind would promote carbon based industries over green technologies? The answer is obvious......the American Right, backed by the American fossil fuel industries.
proxy
Soon we will all be as wealthy as the citizens of North Korea. Say no to poverty and yes to O&G.
La vie douce
This week has been really hot...seems next week will be the same shocker.
Algernon LaCroix
Only a carbon tax will save us now.
Roy Sophveason
It's not all doom and gloom. Future generations will fondly look back to July 2023 and reminisce about how cool it was. Glass half full, people!
EFD
It was 83 Fahrenheit at 8 AM in Kansas City today with a high of 103. For the 5th day in a row.
No, that’s not normal.
No, it hasn’t always been this hot for this long.
No, Global Warming is not a hoax.
Hervé L'Eisa
Is this Michael Mann, the creator of the debunked "hockey stick" graph?
One of the cadre of alarmists who predicted the end of Arctic ice and snow by the year 2000? And the "disappearance" of numerous nations, also by 2000?
A person, or people who make such a number of false predictions (due to the combination of falsified data and distorted computer modelling) can hardly be considered reliable by any sentient person.
Is it hot? Yes! Is it the "hottest on record"? Does this "record" exclude the 1920s & 1930s and completely ignore the Medieval Warm Period?
Inquiring minds want to know...
proxy
@EFD
I forgot to add that the longest streak of days with highs above 100 F in Kansas City was also in 1936 at 53 consecutive days. The second longest streak was in 1934. The 5th longest streak was in 1901.
Hervé L'Eisa
Taking into account the claims of record temps in Europe, several factors must be honestly considered.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/25/hottest-day-evah-in-palermo/
Lord Dartmouth
Totally agree, Hervé
And here's some interesting data when people tell you it's so much hotter in Japan than it was 20 years ago:
August 2002
Max: 37.2°C
Average: 31.2°C
August 2022
Max: 36.1°C
Average: 31.29°C
Blacklabel
Yes it’s most surely hotter than any other time in the last 120,000 years! /s
Roy Sophveason
And that doesn't strike you as odd? You don't find it strange that, for this and other climate change denying agents, it is getting increasingly complicated to "debunk climate change"? You don't notice the increasing lengths they have to go to, to explain away what most other scientists are saying?
I'm sure there's a name for the opposite of Occam's razor.
wallace
Florida's sea temperature is 37.8ºC. That is like taking a hot bath.
Jimizo
Not the most balanced or objective website I’ve seen.
Then again, I don’t think it’s pretending to be.
wallace
The youngest bros said it is hell working in Rome.
1glenn
If we humans try very hard, or refuse to make changes, it should be possible to wipe out life as we know it in a few hundred more years.
Blacklabel
Regardless this “hottest in 120,000 years” claim is beyond ridiculous.
Jimizo
Shoot down this claim with your exacting non-partisanship, attention to detail and deep knowledge of this subject matter.
wallace
The post title is "July 2023 set to be world's hottest month on record."
餓死鬼
I think you already know nothing of the sort is going to happen. The "discussions" on these articles go round in circles; nothing you say, no amount of reasoning, no sources of scientific research and data you provide will change their minds, and they're highly unlikely to provide you with anything to change yours. So, there's nothing left but....scorchio!
Blacklabel
Yet the article says:
Blacklabel
It’s actually for you to prove it IS the hottest time in 120,000 years- not for me to disprove it.
so you believe this to actually be true?
Cards fan
lol No. You're claiming the facts in the article are wrong. Prove it.
餓死鬼
Why would anyone waste time doing that for you? A team of paleoclimatologists could attempt presenting their research directly to you and you'd dismiss it all as liberal-funded agenda-driven narratives before they even got past "hello".
Eastman
i see nothing extraordinary in Japan after 3 decades living here...summer is HOT.
adios