Global Atmosphere, Ocean Temperatures Break Records in June

livemint.com:

Global temperature maps have become dark red as rising temperatures capped the world’s warmest day since record-keeping began in 1979, while last month was the hottest June, according to new data from U.S. and European scientists.

The global averageatmospheric temperature on Tuesday, July 4, was 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the previous record of 62.6 degrees on July 3, according to data that is collected daily by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and compiled by the University of Maine. In a separate assessment released Thursday, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, found that June 2023 was the hottest June registered.

Climate scientists at theCopernicus weather service, a scientific agency funded by the European Union, say the record temperatures are the result of industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere over decades and a powerful El Niño weather pattern—a natural phenomenon—that has developed in the Pacific Ocean. “This is what we expect to happen with global warming progressing and having an El Niño on top of that," said Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, an independent climate data organization, not involved in either report.

“Now we’re hitting the highest temperatures we’ve ever seen." The heat has reached all corners of the planet, from record temperatures in Northern Europe to record-low sea ice cover in waters around Antarctica, say scientists from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, who based their findings ontemperature data collected from satellites, weather stations and oceangoing instruments. Last month, the global atmospheric