Climate Scientists Warn Summer Temps Could Hit 1.9°C
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- Climate Central scientists, including former NOAA researcher Zack Labe, warned at a Tuesday briefing that atmospheric CO2 hit a record high in May and that this summer's monthly average global temperature could rise as much as 3.5°F (1.9°C) above the pre-industrial benchmark used to measure greenhouse-gas heating.
- Climate Central launched its monthly public briefings after NOAA, citing Trump administration budget cuts, canceled its own climate briefings last year; Labe and Tom Di Liberto are former NOAA scientists who previously ran the agency's government briefings.
- Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen wrote that 2026 is likely the planet's warmest year on record despite starting cooler than 2024, and warned that the public misunderstands the current dangerous acceleration of warming because the media are "gobbling up" a fundamentally flawed interpretation of climate sensitivity based on IPCC estimates.
- Copernicus, the EU's climate change service, published a June 11 report by 70 scientists from 56 institutions across 17 countries showing Earth is accumulating heat faster than at any time in the known record, with the planet's energy imbalance doubling in recent decades.
- Copernicus lead author Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre at the University of Leeds, said that without human influence the energy imbalance "should be close to zero," and the study attributes nearly all warming over the last decade to human activities.
- Human emissions are overwhelming natural carbon sinks — forests and oceans — with about two-thirds of excess atmospheric CO2 having accumulated in just the past 50 years, Labe explained, noting that CO2 normally peaks each May before Northern Hemisphere forests draw it down during the growing season.
Why it matters: U.S. monthly climate updates now come from a private nonprofit staffed by former NOAA scientists after the Trump administration cut NOAA's briefings — a structural shift in how the public receives authoritative climate science, funded by donations rather than federal science agencies. Hansen's independent warning that 2026 is likely the warmest year on record and that mainstream climate sensitivity estimates are too low runs parallel to Copernicus's finding that planetary heat accumulation has doubled in recent decades.
