The extreme heat trend is likely to be reflected in monthly reports from US agencies.
Washington:
July 2023 will likely be the world’s warmest month in “hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt said Thursday.
Daily records have already been broken this month, according to tools from the European Union and the University of Maine, which combine ground and satellite data into models to generate preliminary estimates.
While they differ slightly, the trend of extreme heat is unmistakable and will likely be reflected in the more robust monthly reports later issued by US agencies, Schmidt said in a NASA briefing with reporters.
“We are seeing unprecedented changes around the world – the heat waves we are seeing in the US, Europe and China are shattering records left, right and center,” he added.
In addition, the effects cannot be attributed solely to the El Nino weather pattern, which is “really just emerging.”
While El Nino plays a small role, “what we’re seeing is overall warmth pretty much everywhere, especially in the oceans. We’ve been seeing record-breaking sea surface temperatures for months, even outside the tropics.
“And we will anticipate that this will continue, and the reason we think this will continue is because we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
What’s happening right now increases the odds of 2023 being the warmest year on record, which Schmidt currently assigns a “50-50 chance” based on his calculations, though he said other scientists had put it at 80 percent.
“But we expect 2024 to be an even hotter year as we start with that El Nino event that is now building and will peak by the end of this year.”
Schmidt’s warnings come as the world has been ravaged over the past week by fires and serious health warnings, in addition to broken temperature records.
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