The start of July was the hottest week on record, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday. This is followed by the warmest June on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and record low Antarctic sea ice extent, she added. The WMO statement comes at a time when Himachal Pradesh, parts of northern Punjab, Haryana and Delhi in India have experienced unprecedented rainfall.
The exceptional warmth in June and early July occurred at the start of the development of El Nino, which is expected to further promote warmth both on land and in the oceans, leading to more extreme temperatures and heat waves at sea. There are in uncharted territory and can expect more records to be broken as El Nino continues to develop and these impacts extend into 2024.
According to an interim analysis based on reanalysis data from Japan called JRA-3Q, the global average temperature on July 7 was 17.24 °C. This is 0.3°C above the previous record of 16.94°C on August 16, 2016 – also a strong El Nino year.
Japanese reanalysis data has been made available to WMO and is not yet confirmed. However, it is in line with preliminary data from the European Union’s Copernicus programme, the WMO said.
Omar Baddour, head of climate monitoring at the WMO. “WMO and the wider scientific community are closely monitoring these dramatic changes in various components of the climate system and sea surface temperatures,” Baddour said.
A report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that June 2023 was just over 0.5°C above the 1991-2020 average, beating the previous record set in June 2019. According to Copernicus, record June temperatures were recorded in northwestern Europe. Parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Asia and eastern Australia were significantly warmer than normal. Several places were colder than normal, including western Australia, the western US and western Russia.
“Global sea surface temperatures in May and June were record highs for the time of year. This comes with a cost. This will impact the distribution of fisheries and ocean circulation in general, with knock-on effects on climate. It’s not just the surface temperature, but the entire ocean is warming and absorbing energy that will stay there for hundreds of years. Alarm bells are ringing particularly loudly due to unprecedented sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic,” the WMO said.
According to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure weather conditions, the global air temperature on July 3 was 17.1°C; July 4 — 17.18°C; July 5 — 17.18°C; July 6 — 17.23°C and July 7 — 17.20°C.
Several climatologists agree that global warming and the onset of El Nino conditions are now interacting, so the world should prepare for more records. The triple dip of La Nina, which began in 2020 and ended in early 2023, moderated the impact of global warming to an extent that is now waning. La Nina has a cooling effect, although the recent La Nina period has seen record heat globally, including India.
El Nino is characterized by an unusual warming of waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific that is highly correlated with warmer summers globally and weaker monsoon rains in India. The WMO has predicted that there is a 90% chance of a continuation of the El Nino event during the second half of 2023. It is expected to be at least of moderate strength.
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