Global average temperatures in the beginning of June were the warmest on record for the period, according to the European Union’s climate monitoring unit.
The report by Copernicus, the EU’s observation agency, said they have noted “remarkable global warmth” in the first week of June this year.
The report cited the data provided by ERA5 which found that the first few days of the month even breached a 1.5 degree Celsius increase when compared with pre-industrial times.
The report comes amid warnings made last week by scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the arrival of an expected El Nino climate phenomenon has raised fears of extreme weather and temperature records.
The Copernicus report suggests that this might be the first time this breach of high temperature had occurred in the industrial era. “Global-mean surface air temperatures for the first days of June 2023 were the highest in the ERA5 data record for early June by a substantial margin,” said the report, with the data collection going back as far as 1950.
Last week, NOAA said that the El Nino conditions are now present and will “gradually strengthen” into early 2024.
Global temperatures set to surge to record levels
The weather pattern in question is marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean near the equator that last occurred in 2018-19, it said.
A new update issued by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) last week said global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event.
There is a 66 percent likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is a 98 percent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record, WMO said.
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
Follow us on
