August joint-hottest month on record as climate change and El Niño drive heat — SkimNews
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- Copernicus confirmed August tied July 2023 as the hottest month ever recorded, with global temperatures 1.65°C above pre-industrial levels and exceeding the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold.
- El Niño is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record, with its biggest impact on global temperatures expected over the coming year, the Copernicus team said.
- Western Europe recorded its warmest summer on record, surpassing the deadly 2003 heatwave, while the UK logged its hottest summer since records began in 1884.
- The Met Office found the UK's record-hot summer was made around 130 times more likely by human-caused climate change, Dr Clair Barnes of Imperial College London said, noting tens of thousands of lives were claimed by the heat.
- UN climate chief Simon Stiell called the record "the spiralling price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction," pointing to ongoing fossil fuel use as the driving force.
- Dr Samantha Burgess, Copernicus strategic lead for climate, described August as "remarkable" and said record air temperatures, record ocean heat and Europe's exceptional summer showed climate change driving extremes across "both the atmosphere and the oceans."
Why it matters: A single month breaching 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — driven by both fossil fuel emissions and a still-strengthening El Niño — signals that record-shattering heat is arriving faster than the Paris Agreement's worst-case scenario timeline anticipated, with Western Europe's deadliest summer since 2003 now made 130 times more likely by human activity.
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