June marks 13th straight month of record-high global average temperature

The European climate service Copernicus provided Monday (Jul. 08) a stark warning as the world gets closer to the warming limit set by the Paris Agreement.

The global temperature in June was record warm for the 13th straight month and marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.

"The global temperature is continuing, continues to increase at a rapid pace. And the records have been also shattered by very substantial margin over the past, what, 13 months? So that was quite remarkable as well," Copernicus climate scientist Nicolas Julien said.

June's heat hit extra hard in northern Africa, western Antarctica, the Middle East, southeast Europe, Turkey, eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil and northern Siberia, according to Copernicus. Doctors had to treat thousands of heatstroke victims in Pakistan last month as temperatures hit 117 (47 degrees Celsius).

The globe for June 2024 averaged 62 degrees Fahrenheit (16.66 degrees Celsius), which is 1.2 degrees (0.67 Celsius) above the 30-year average for the month, according to Copernicus.

It also marked the15th straight month that the world’s oceans, more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, have broken heat records.

Global daily average temperatures in late June and early July, while still hot, were not as warm as last year, Julien said.

Most of this heat is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Julien and other meteorologists said. An overwhelming amount of the heat energy trapped by human-caused climate change goes directly into the ocean and those oceans take longer to warm and cool.

Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world and then reanalyzes it with computer simulations.