Climate Breaking the 1.5 degree mark every month for a year now

It is an ominous series - and it threatens the goal that the international community is aiming for with the Paris Climate Agreement: June 2024 was also the warmest June since records began.

It was 1.5 degrees above the estimated June average for 1850 to 1900, the pre-industrial reference period, according to the EU climate change service Copernicus. This was the twelfth consecutive month to reach or exceed the 1.5 degree threshold.

At the end of 2015, Switzerland and many other countries set themselves the goal of keeping global warming well below two degrees and, if possible, limiting it to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times in the Paris Climate Agreement. However, this is about the average temperature over longer periods of time, not individual months or years.

There is as yet no formally agreed definition of what exactly counts as exceeding the 1.5 degree target. Many climate experts assume that the 1.5 degree threshold can no longer be met anyway.

According to Copernicus data, the global temperature was 1.64 degrees above the pre-industrial average for the entire period from July 2023 to June 2024. For 13 months, every single month has been the warmest in the world since records began. Such a series of records is "unusual, but a similar series of monthly global temperature records already occurred in 2015/2016", Copernicus announced.

The average surface air temperature in June was 16.66 degrees. This was 0.67 degrees above the June average from 1991 to 2020 and 0.14 degrees above the previous record set in June 2023.

Europe: particularly warm in the south-east

The average European temperature in June 2024 exceeded the average value for the June months from 1991 to 2020 by 1.57 degrees. This made it the second warmest June since records began in Europe, according to the report. It was particularly hot in the south-east of the continent and in Turkey, while temperatures in western Europe, Iceland and north-western Russia were close to or below average.

In Iceland, central Europe and large parts of south-western Europe, June was wetter than average, it added, "with heavy rainfall leading to flooding in several regions of Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland".

Outside Europe, temperatures were above average in eastern Canada, the western USA, Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, North Africa and western Antarctica.

Further records due to global warming

"This is more than just a statistical curiosity, it highlights a major and ongoing climate change," explained Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo. "Even if this particular series of extremes ends at some point, we will inevitably see new records as the climate continues to warm. This is inevitable if we don't stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and oceans."

Among other things, the natural weather phenomenon El Niño could have contributed to the temperature records. Every few years, it causes a rise in water temperatures in parts of the Pacific and higher air temperatures.

The European Union's Copernicus climate change service regularly publishes data on the Earth's surface temperature, sea ice cover and precipitation. The findings are based on computer-generated analyses that incorporate billions of measurements from satellites, ships, airplanes and weather stations around the world. The data used dates back to 1950, with some earlier data also available.

SDA