Average temperatures around the world at a record high for early June

The average global temperatures recorded in early June were the hottest ever recorded for this period by the European Copernicus service, beating previous records by a “substantial margin”, a probable foretaste of the El Niño phenomenon.

“The world has just had its warmest start to June on record, after a month of May that was only 0.1°C cooler than the record,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European service Copernicus, said in a statement on Thursday. on climate change (C3S).

Copernicus, which does not specify the value of these average global temperatures, however points out that they have exceeded pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5°C.

The Paris Agreement, reached in December 2015 at the end of COP21, aimed precisely to keep the increase in global average temperature “well below 2°C” during this century and to continue efforts to rather limit it to 1.5°C.

However, the average daily temperature in the world has already reached at least 1.5°C higher than the pre-industrial era between June 7 and 11, even reaching 1.69°C higher on June 9, a Copernicus spokesperson told AFP.

This is the first time that the 1.5°C mark has been crossed during this June period, although it has already been crossed several times in winter and spring in recent years.

“The average air temperatures on the surface of the planet for the first days of June were the highest recorded in the ERA5 dataset (global climate data recorded since 1979, editor’s note) for an early June, and by a substantial margin”, specifies Copernicus, which works on data which goes back for some to 1950.

“It’s not surprising because there is a tendency to increase” in temperatures, commented François-Marie Bréon, deputy director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE), questioned by the AFP. “When an El Niño event develops it tends to raise temperatures by a few tenths of a degree,” he explains.

These new heat records come as the El Niño phenomenon, generally associated with an increase in global temperatures, has officially begun, recalls Copernicus, which also recently announced that the surface of the oceans had just experienced its month of May on hottest ever recorded.

“If a year is particularly hot, it is not necessarily significant, but what is of course is this heavy trend which shows an increase in temperatures of about 2 tenths of a degree per decade”, underlines Francois-Marie Breon.

“Every fraction of a degree counts to avoid even more serious consequences of the climate crisis”, insists Samantha Burgess.

Copernicus is based in Bonn, the very place where international climate negotiations are currently being held under the aegis of the UN, before the big COP28 scheduled for Dubai at the end of the year. The question of humanity’s use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), the main causes of global warming, will be hotly debated on this occasion.

“El Niño years have always been warm but now they come against a backdrop of warming fueled by the use of fossil fuels, decade after decade, which has made extreme temperatures more likely,” warns Richard Hodgkins, professor of physical geography at the British University of Loughborough.

The episodes of heat “have the effect of forest fires, the melting of the ice at the poles or an increase in the demand for electricity for air conditioning” which “only add to the warming”, he concludes, while the drought is hitting Europe and monster fires are ravaging Canada right now.

Another subject of concern for specialists: an “exceptionally high” temperature phenomenon in the North Atlantic, says François-Marie Bréon.