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July 2023 will be the world’s hottest month in “hundreds, if not thousands of years,” according to the chief climatologist at the U.S. space agency NASA. “We’re seeing unprecedented changes all over the world; the heat waves we’re seeing in the U.S., Europe, and China are breaking records,” Gavin Schmidt said.
Several heat records have already been surpassed this month, according to measurements from the European Union and the University of Maine, which use ground and satellite data to create models for preliminary estimates. Although they differed slightly, the trend of extreme heat is unmistakable and likely to be confirmed by more robust monthly reports from U.S. agencies, Schmidt added.
Moreover, he said, the effects cannot be blamed solely on the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has “just started.” Even if El Niño played a minor role, it was “the global heat, pretty much everywhere, especially in the oceans.” It has seen temperatures at record highs at the ocean surface, even outside the tropics and for many months now, Schmidt noted.
The current weather phenomena increase the likelihood that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. He said that Schmidt’s calculations put the odds at 50-50, while other scientists put the probability at 80 percent.
“We expect 2024 to be an even warmer year because we’re going to start it with the El Niño phenomenon that’s just building up and that will peak at the end of this year.”
- source: krone.at/picture: pixabay.com
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