Global heat hits fresh record in 12-month streak

Every month since June 2023 has recorded average temperatures that are 1.5 degrees C warmer than the pre-industrial period and the global average temperature for the past 12 months (July 2023 – June 2024) is the highest on record, at 0.76 degree C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.64 degrees C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Monday. FILE- A man covers his face with a cloth to shield from the heat in Jammu, India, Monday, May 20, 2024. A monthslong heatwave across swathes of India has killed more than 100 people and led to over 40,000 suspected cases of heat stroke in the last three and a half months, a Health Ministry official said Thursday, June 20. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)(AP)

This June was the 13th month in a row that temperatures have been at a record high, despite developing La Nina conditions, C3S said. It was warmer globally than any previous June in the data record, with an average ERA5 (1940 onwards) surface air temperature of 16.66 degrees C, 0.67 degree C above the 1991-2020 average for June and 0.14 degree C above the previous high set in June 2023.

Breaching the 1.5 degrees C threshold for a year is not equivalent to failing the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees C, to avoid or reduce adverse impacts and related losses and damages.

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The sea surface temperature (SST) averaged for June 2024 was 20.85 degrees C, the highest value on record for the month. This is the fifteenth month in a row that the SST has been the warmest in the ERA5 data record for the respective month of the year.

Outside Europe, temperatures were above average over eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, and Brazil, where there were a large number of wildfires.

“Eastern India suffered heatwaves, as did Pakistan and Korea where the hottest June day was recorded. The majority of northern Siberia, the Middle East and northern Africa also experienced temperatures above average, as did western Antarctica,” C3S said.

The 2023-24 El Niño event has been an important contributor to the high global SSTs observed over the past year.

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“Although SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific increasingly fell below the 1991-2020 average during June, indicative of an expected transition from El Niño to La Niña conditions, SSTs remained the highest on record in a sizeable part of the tropical western Pacific and to the west of Central America,” C3S said, adding : “High SSTs in oceanic regions outside of the equatorial Pacific are a key contributor to the record or near-record global-average SST in June... Record SSTs across the Caribbean Sea may have contributed to the intensification of Hurricane Beryl, a storm that was exceptional in reaching Category 5 as early in the year as 1 July.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Synthesis Report last year said: “Overshooting 1.5°C warming will lead to irreversible impacts and risks for human and natural systems, all growing with the magnitude and duration of overshoot”.

Experts warned that if similar trends continued, India would face a rise in severe weather events. “This was expected. Last year was an El Niño year. It was adding more warming in addition to the global warming trend. But as La Niña is developing it should cool down little bit. However, impact of global warming will continue. We should expect associated extreme weather events. I strongly feel we are going to face plenty of problems associated with the extreme events. The recent rains in Delhi and now Mumbai are good examples. Models have problems of picking up these events in advance,” said M Rajeevan, former secretary, ministry of earth sciences.

BOILERPLATE ON EL NINO AND LA NINA

It was the warmest June for northwest India since record keeping began in 1901, India Meteorological Department said on June 1, bearing out the deadly heat spell recorded over Delhi, Utar Pradesh and other parts of northwest India which killed at least 100 people. East and northeast India also recorded its warmest June in terms of night time temperatures.

Against a normal of three-four heatwave days, 10-18 heat wave days were reported in West Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana-Chandigarh-Delhi, HP, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Gangetic West Bengal, East Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha in June , IMD added.

Following an unusually hot summer, Delhi on June 28 and Mumbai on Monday have experienced massive disruption due to record rainfall recorded in a very short period of time.

HT reported on Monday that extreme rain events are unfolding across the country with increased frequency, when large, rain-filled convective clouds form and dump copious amounts of rain over relatively limited areas taking the authorities by surprise.

“The weather systems in the tropics are often small, fast-moving, and short-lived, involving significant energy. Predicting these systems has always been a challenge. Now, climate change is adding more energy, producing localized extreme weather events that state-of-the-art models find even more difficult to predict. Our monitoring is also imperfect. We need monitoring stations at the panchayat level, with data readily available. With these, high-resolution models that accurately represent the climate system, and AI-based support systems, we should be able to monitor and predict hyperlocal weather extremes like cloudbursts and flash floods,” Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology said on Saturday.