Last week the hottest worldwide on record, says UN agency

PARIS – The start of July was the hottest week on record for the planet, according to data on Monday from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), after a series of scorching days saw global temperature records tumble.

“The world just had the hottest week on record, according to preliminary data,” the WMO said in a statement, after climate change and the early stages of the El Nino weather pattern drove the warmest June on record.

It is the latest in a series of records halfway through

a year that has already seen a drought in Spain

and fierce heatwaves in China and the United States.

Temperatures are breaking records both on land and in the oceans, with “potentially devastating impacts on ecosystems and the environment”, the WMO said.

“We are in uncharted territory and we can expect more records to fall as El Nino develops further and these impacts will extend into 2024,” said WMO director of climate services Christopher Hewitt, adding: “This is worrying news for the planet.”

The United Nations agency said it had looked at various data sets from partners around the world.

Europe’s climate monitoring service Copernicus told AFP its data also showed last week was likely to be the hottest since records began in 1940. Its data also suggests Thursday was likely to have seen the highest global average temperature, after several record-breaking days earlier in the week.

‘Out of control’

Last week, Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources said the number of wildfires in the country – more than 670 on Friday – was “off the charts”, with a long and difficult summer ahead. Smoke from the fires this season has fouled the air in Canada and the neighbouring US, affecting more than 100 million people.

In the US, Texas is experiencing a prolonged “heat dome” in which warm air is trapped in the atmosphere like a convection oven, while in Europe, Spain is bracing itself for its second heatwave in a matter of weeks.

In southern Iraq, the fabled marshland is suffering its worst heatwave in 40 years, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Monday, warning of a “devastating impact” on the ecosystem as well as farmers and fisheries.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said “the situation we are witnessing now is the demonstration that climate change is out of control”.

As well as withering crops, melting glaciers and raising the risk of wildfires, higher-than-normal temperatures also cause health problems ranging from heatstroke and dehydration to cardiovascular stress.

New research showed that over 61,000 people in Europe died because of the heat during the continent’s record-breaking summer in 2022. The majority of deaths were of people over 80, and about 63 per cent of those who died were women, according to the research published in the journal Nature Medicine on Monday.

Ocean alarm

The world has warmed an average of nearly 1.2 deg C since the mid-1800s, unleashing extreme weather, including more intense heatwaves, more severe droughts in some areas and fiercer storms.

Oceans absorb most of the heat caused by planet-warming gases, causing heatwaves that harm aquatic life, altering weather patterns and disrupting crucial planet-regulating systems.

In June, global sea surface temperatures hit unprecedented levels, while Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent for the month since satellite observations began, at 17 per cent below average, breaking the previous June record by a substantial margin.

While sea surface temperatures normally recede quite quickly from annual peaks, in 2023 they stayed high, with scientists warning that this underscores an underappreciated but grave impact of climate change.

“If the oceans are warming considerably, that has a knock-on effect on the atmosphere, on sea ice and ice worldwide,” said Dr Michael Sparrow, chief of the World Climate Research Programme at the WMO.

“There are a lot of concerns from the scientific community and a lot of catch-up from the scientific community trying to understand the incredible changes that we’re seeing at the moment.”

El Nino is a naturally occurring pattern that drives increased heat worldwide, along with drought in some parts of the world and heavy rain elsewhere.

But Dr Sparrow said its effects would most likely be felt more acutely later in the year.

“El Nino hasn’t really got going yet,” he said. AFP