MEXICO CITY (apro).- The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that this month of July has been the hottest globally since it has been recorded. The average temperature in the first three weeks was 16.95°C according to provisional data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The extreme weather that has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future,” said Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General.
“The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is more urgent than ever. Climate action is not a luxury, but a must”, he underlined.
Also last month was the hottest June on record, but July this year is the month with the hottest temperatures ever recorded. Modern records date from the 20th or 19th century and according to experts in paleoclimatology, the average temperature reached in July has not been recorded on the planet for much longer.
July 6 was the hottest day ever recorded, with an average temperature of 17.08 degrees. However, between July 3 and July 23, the previous record of 16.8 degrees, recorded on August 13, 2016, was broken every day.
The monthly average reported by the WMO, of 16.95, was prepared with data from the first 23 days of July, far exceeding the previous record for a month, which until now was 16.63 degrees, a temperature recorded in July 2019.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service will publish the final data on the temperature recorded in July of this year on August 8.
“It will not only be the warmest July, but the warmest month on record in terms of global mean absolute temperature. We may have to go back thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, to find similar warm conditions on our planet,” said Karsten Haustein, a climatologist at the University of Leipzig in Germany.
His Berkeley Earth colleague, researcher Zeke Hausfather, agreed: “Our past CO2 emissions have accumulated in the atmosphere, and even without any additional warming, this century will be warmer than any similar period in the last 120,000 years.”
According to the report, episodes of extreme heat and drought around the world will be greater in the coming decades in all possible future emission scenarios, but the most significant increases will occur in the scenarios of greater pollution, where no applied climate policies.
The researchers used state-of-the-art climate models and analyzed four emissions scenarios between 1950 and 2100 to assess how extremely hot, dry, and hot-dry composites are expected to change compared to current climate conditions.
