July 2021 world's hottest month on record: US agency

WASHINGTON • July was the world's hottest month on record, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in the latest data to underline the climate crisis.

"July is typically the world's warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded," NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said.

"This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe," Dr Spinrad said in a statement on Friday, citing data from the National Centres for Environmental Information.

The NOAA said combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 of a deg C) above the 20th century average of 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit (15.7 deg C), making it the hottest July since record-keeping began 142 years ago. The month was 0.02 of a degree Fahrenheit higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was equalled in 2019 and last year.

According to data released by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, last month was the third-warmest July on record globally. It is common for agencies to have small differences in data.

Last week, a climate science report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provoked shock by saying the world is on course to reaching 1.5 deg C of warming around 2030.

"Scientists from across the globe delivered the most up-to-date assessment of the ways in which the climate is changing," Mr Spinrad said. "It is a sobering IPCC report that finds that human influence is, unequivocally, causing climate change, and it confirms the impacts are widespread and rapidly intensifying."

Meanwhile, as wildfires incinerate swathes of the Mediterranean, United Nations officials and disaster experts have called for an urgent revamp of firefighting to cope with a new era of mega-blazes.

Nearly 80 people have died in fires that have swept across Algeria, Greece, Italy and Turkey, driving thousands from their homes and underscoring projections in last week's IPCC report of spiralling "fire weather conditions" by mid-century.

In the new climatic era, mega-fires may erupt within minutes of ignition, said Mr Sebastien Penzini, deputy Europe chief of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

"The evolving nature of wildfires obliges us to really change our paradigm and put more emphasis on fire prevention than on suppression," he said.

"Because the fires to come - and those we're already observing in Europe - are completely beyond (our) control."

In a week when the mercury in Italy hit 48.8 deg C - which could be a European record - experts like Mr Penzini urged nations to adopt a raft of reforms, including mandatory fire breaks, new regulations and improved rural development. "Prevention is not a cost," Mr Penzini said. "It's an investment which deserves and requires more budgets and funding."

He also called for tough new laws to regulate outdoor fires and oblige homeowners in fire-prone areas to maintain "defensible areas" - buffer spaces between houses and nearby grass, trees and shrubs.

The rise in extreme weather events is also raising bigger policy questions about the safest places to live in Europe - with risks posed by having both too many and too few people in areas that are vulnerable to scorching summer heat.

Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast was hit last month by its biggest fires to date. Three people died and hotels in the popular beach resorts of Marmaris and Didim had to be evacuated because of separate blazes.

"As a strategic question, should those resorts even be there?" asked Mr Peter Moore, a fire management specialist with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, adding that reducing fuel loads in these areas should be the priority.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS