E.U. agency warns records will continue to be broken in future due to climate change
July 2019 was the warmest month across the globe ever recorded, according to data released on Monday by the European Union’s satellite-based Earth observation network.
“While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally, by a very small margin,” Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future.”
Searing heatwaves saw records tumble across Europe last month, with unusually high temperatures within the Arctic Circle as well.
Temperatures averaged across July rose highest compared with a 1981-2010 benchmark in Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, central Asia, Iran and large swathes of Antarctica, Copernicus reported. Africa and Australia were also well above average across most of each continent.
Globally, July 2019 was marginally warmer—by 0.04 degrees Celsius (0.072 Fahrenheit)—than the previous record-hot month, July 2016.
The new record is all the more notable because the 2016 record followed a strong El Nino weather event, which boosts average global temperatures beyond the impact of global warming alone.
The Copernicus service is the first of the world’s major satellite-based climate monitoring networks to report average July temperatures. The margin of increase is small enough, it noted in a press release, that other networks—such as the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—may report temperatures equal to or slightly below the July 2016 record.
“Typically, there is a difference between the values provided by the global temperature datasets of various institutions, and the Copernicus difference between July 2019 and 2016 temperatures is smaller than this margin,” the agency said in a statement.
Accurate temperature records extend into the 19th century, starting around 1880.