The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said that the global surface temperature in early June broke the high temperature record for the same period.
The European Union’s climate watchdog said the global average temperature in early June was the warmest on record for that period, beating previous records by a “substantial margin”.
“The world just experienced its warmest early June on record,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Center for Climate Change Services (C3S), said in a statement Thursday.
“The global mean surface air temperature for the first few days of June 2023 is the highest in the ERA5 data record for early June by a large margin,” the Copernicus unit said, noting that some data date back to 1950.
Temperatures have since cooled, but experts say the brief spike in early June marked a new record for global heat for the month and suggested more extremes are ahead as the planet enters an El Niño event that could last for years.
In early June, global surface temperatures rose for the first time by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, researchers from the European Union’s Copernicus Institute reported.
That’s when governments at the 2015 Paris summit said they would try to stay within the threshold.
The data shows that from June 7th to 11th, the global daily average temperature was at or above the critical value of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and on June 9th it reached a maximum of above 1.69 degrees Celsius.
The unit said that from June 8 to 9 this year, the global average daily temperature was about 0.4 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record for the same period.
“As global average temperatures continue to rise and exceed the 1.5C limit more frequently, the cumulative impact of excess will become increasingly severe and must be carefully monitored,” the department said.
The number of days at the 1.5C threshold that occurred during the three-year La Niña phase – which tends to dampen the effects of global warming – has given way to the opposite El Niño period, which could raise global temperatures by another half a degree or more average temperature.
Copernicus recently announced that global ocean temperatures last month were higher than any other May on record.
“As El Niño continues to develop, 2024 is expected to be warmer than 2023,” Burgess said.
“We also know that the warmer the global climate is, the more likely we are to have extreme events, and the more severe those extreme events are likely to be,” she said.
“Therefore, there is a direct correlation between the degree of global warming and the frequency and intensity of extreme events.”
The world is accelerating its response to climate change catastrophe, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, adding that the global response was woefully inadequate.
Guterres said current climate policies would lead to average temperatures of 2.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, almost double the United Nations’ 1.5 degrees Celsius target.
“It spells disaster. However, the collective reaction remains pathetic,” Guterres told a news conference.
#climateaction is being destroyed.
Lack of aggressiveness.
lack of trust.
Lack of support.
Lack of cooperation.
And plenty of questions around clarity and credibility.
It’s time to wake up and step up. pic.twitter.com/OWaklAoilc
— Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) June 15, 2023
“We are heading for disaster, eyes wide open – too many are willing to bet it all on wishful thinking, unproven technology and panacea solutions. Time to wake up and stand up,” said UN Secretary-General Long talk.
The fossil fuel industry, he said, must not only transform, but transform across the board as it shifts toward clean energy “and away from products that are incompatible with human existence.”
“Countries are way off track in meeting their climate commitments and promises. I see a lack of ambition. A lack of trust. A lack of support. A lack of cooperation. And a lot of questions around clarity and credibility,” he said.
