Summer 2024 breaks every record:it is the hottest ever in Europe and in the world

This summer was the hottest ever recorded and everything suggests that 2024 will break every temperature record:the European Copernicus service says so.

• Also in August 2024 the global average temperature exceeded the threshold of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
• According to Copernicus data, summer 2024 was the hottest ever both globally and at European level.

Billions of measurements carried out by satellites, ships, planes and weather stations around the world, analyzed by the European Climate Change Monitoring Service Copernicus, come to a clear conclusion: the summer of 2024 was the hottest on record.Both in Europe and on a global scale.

Even in August, global warming exceeded the 1.5 degree threshold

In his periodic bulletin, Copernicus – as usual – first releases the data on the past month.To August the global average temperature of the earth's surface was 16.82 degrees centigrade, exactly the same as a year earlier.This means that those of 2024 and 2023 are tied at the top of the rankings hottest August on record.In Europe, the average temperature exceeded that recorded (again for the month of August) in the period 1991-2020 by 1.57 degrees centigrade:only August 2022 was warmer, reaching 1.73 degrees centigrade higher.

The past month was also the thirteenth month out of 14 in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels.That is, the threshold which, according to theParis Agreement on climate, humanity would have to strive not to go beyond it before the end of the century.

The hottest summer ever, in the (probably) hottest year ever

Having archived August, Copernicus can also make an overall assessment of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. A summer that beats any record heat, in the world and in Europe:the average temperature, in fact, exceeds the average recorded - again in the June-August quarter - between 1991 and 2020 by 0.69 and 1.54 degrees respectively.To trace the second hottest summer ever, you don't need to go back too far in time:at a global level it was in 2023, at a European level in 2022.

“During the last three months of 2024, the globe experienced its warmest June and August, the hottest day ever and the hottest boreal summer on record.This series of record temperatures increases the likelihood that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” he points out Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus climate change service.“The temperature-related extreme weather events we have witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet, if we do not act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.