Extreme Heatwave Sweeps the Globe, Setting Early June Temperature Record
PARIS: The European Union’s climate monitoring unit reported that the average global temperatures in early June reached the highest levels ever recorded for the period, surpassing previous records by a significant margin. This news coincides with the official arrival of the El Nino climate phenomenon, raising concerns about extreme weather events and the likelihood of further temperature records.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), stated, “The world has just witnessed its warmest early June on record, following a May that was only slightly cooler than the warmest May ever recorded.” Copernicus confirmed that the global-mean surface air temperatures in the first days of June 2023 were substantially higher than any previous early June data recorded in the ERA5 dataset, some of which dates back to 1950.
Copernicus recently announced that global oceans were also the warmest in May compared to any other May on record. Furthermore, the unit revealed that at the beginning of June, global temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit), which surpasses the most ambitious target for global warming set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
