July 2023 is set to upend previous heat benchmarks, UN Secretary-general António Guterres said yesterday after scientists said it was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also said in a joint statement it was “extremely likely” July 2023 would break the record.
For all latest news, follow The My News’s Google News channel. “We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board,” UN Secretary-general António Guterres in New York said.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” he told reporters, adding “the era of global boiling has arrived”.
The effects of July’s heat have been seen across the world. Thousands of tourists fled wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes, and many more suffered baking heat across the US Southwest. Temperatures in a northwest China township soared as high as 52.2C (126F), breaking the national record.
While the WMO would not call the record outright, instead waiting until the availability of all finalised data in August, an analysis by Germany’s Leipzig University released yesterday found that July 2023 would clinch the record.
This month’s mean global temperature is projected to be at least 0.2C (0.4F) warmer than July 2019, the former hottest in the 174-year observational record, according to EU data.
The margin of difference between now and July 2019 is “so substantial that we can already say with absolute certainty that it is going to be the warmest July”, Leipzig climate scientist Karsten Haustein said.
July 2023 is estimated to be roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial mean. The WMO has confirmed that the first three weeks of July have been the warmest on record.
Commenting on the pattern, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was clear by mid-July that it was going to be a record warm month, and provided an “indicator of a planet that will continue to warm as long as we burn fossil fuels”.
