Scott Base – The world just had the hottest week on record, according to preliminary data. It follows the hottest June on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and record low Antarctic sea ice extent.
The record breaking temperatures on land and in the ocean have potentially devastating impacts on ecosystems and the environment. They highlight the far-reaching changes taking place in earth’s system as a result of human-induced climate change, the World Meteorological Association says.
WMO’s spokesman Christopher Hewitt says the exceptional warmth in June and at the start of July occurred at the onset of the development of El Niño, which is expected to further fuel the heat both on land and in the oceans and lead to more extreme temperatures and marine heatwaves.
“We are in uncharted territory and we can expect more records to fall as El Niño develops further and these impacts will extend into 2024. This is worrying news for the planet,” he says.
According to provisional analysis based on reanalysis data from Japan named JRA-3Q, the average global temperature on 7 July was 17.24degC. This is 0.3C above the previous record of 16.94C on August 167 2016.
Comparisons of daily global mean temperature are typically only available from combining observations from satellites etc with computer model simulations, into datasets called reanalyses.
Record June temperatures were experienced across northwest Europe, according to Copernicus. Parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Asia, and eastern Australia were significantly warmer than normal.
June wasn’t the hottest everywhere, in fact It was cooler than normal in a few places including over western Australia, the western United States, and western Russia.
Extratropical wetter-than-average regions included western north America, regions of south-western Asia, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand and a large region of Australia.
