The year is not over, but the temperatures recorded across the globe this summer make it “increasingly likely that 2024 will be the hottest year on record”. In its latest monthly report published on Friday 6 September, the European Copernicus Observatory announced that the summer of 2024 was the hottest ever measured on the planet.
The average temperature over the period from June to August surpassed the previous record observed in the summer of 2023. “The global average temperature for the boreal summer (June to August) 2024 was the highest ever recorded, 0.69°C above the 1991-2020 average for these three months, surpassing the previous record for June to August 2023 (0.66°C)”, Copernicus details. Compared to an average summer during the pre-industrial era (1850-1900), that of 2024 was 1.5°C warmer, Copernicus tells franceinfo.
On a monthly scale, the globe also experienced “the hottest months of June and August”, added Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). With a global average temperature of 16.82°C, August was 1.51°C above pre-industrial levels and 0.71°C above the average for Augusts between 1991 and 2020. Burgess also cited the record for the hottest day broken on July 22.
While July was the second warmest since records began, behind only July 2023, the ongoing global average temperature anomaly since January supports the possibility that 2024 could eventually set a new record. “The average anomaly for the remaining months of this year would have to drop by at least 0.30°C for 2024 to be no warmer than 2023,” Copernicus said, adding that “this has never happened.”
Disparities across the world
In Europe, the average temperature in August was 1.57°C higher than those recorded over the period 1991-2020, “making this month the second warmest August ever recorded in Europe after August 2022”, specifies Copernicus. The European observatory points to very different situations on the continent with temperatures “above average in southern and eastern Europe, but below average in the northwestern parts of Ireland and the United Kingdom, in Iceland, on the west coast of Portugal and in southern Norway”.
In the rest of the world, temperatures were well above average “in eastern Antarctica, Texas, Mexico, Canada, northeastern Africa, Iran, China, Japan and Australia”, while they were below average “in far eastern Russia and Alaska, the eastern United States, parts of southern South America, Pakistan and the Sahel”, Copernicus continues.
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