Summer 2023 was world’s hottest year on record: ‘climate breakdown has begun’, warns UN chief
- ‘Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope,’ UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says
- Scientists say frequent heatwaves are generating a ‘witch’s brew’ of air pollution that shortens human lifespans
The summer of 2023 was the hottest on record, according to data from the European Union Climate Change Service released on Wednesday.
The three-month period from June through August surpassed previous records by a large margin, with an average temperature of 16.8 degrees Celsius – 0.66C above average.
Last month was the also the hottest August on record globally, the third straight month in a row to set such a record following the hottest ever June and July, the EU said on Wednesday.
August is estimated to have been around 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial average for the 1850-1900 period. Pursuing efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C is a central pledge of the Paris international climate change agreement adopted by 196 countries in 2015.
July 2023 remains the hottest month ever recorded, while August’s record makes the northern hemisphere’s summer the hottest since records began in 1940.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming, we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop emitting greenhouse gases,” said Samantha Burgess, head of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.