People collect water in hot weather in New Delhi, India on May 22.
Amarjeet Kumar Singh/Anadolu via Getty Images
With each new month comes new records as the planet continues to experience unprecedented, record-breaking heatwaves. Last month, global temperatures were the warmest on record for a May, marking the 12th consecutive month of such record-breaking weather, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Copernicus’ Carlo Buontempo said in a statement that while the current record will eventually end, the record set over the past year is likely to be broken in coming years as the world continues to warm due to rising greenhouse gases. “This period of the hottest months will likely be remembered as a relatively cool one,” Buontempo said.
The average Earth’s surface temperature in May 2024 was 1.52°C higher than the 1850-1900 average, considered pre-industrial levels, and 0.19°C higher than the warmest May to date, in 2020. May 2024 will mark the 11th consecutive month with average temperatures more than 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels, the threshold that countries aim to avoid exceeding under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The global average temperature over the past 12 months was 1.63°C higher than the average from 1850 to 1900, the highest on record, but climate scientists will not consider the 1.5°C limit to have been breached until the long-term average exceeds this level.
Climate scientists had predicted that 2023 and 2024 would be hotter because of an El Niño weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that dumps ocean heat into the atmosphere, temporarily warming the surface of the planet on top of the trends caused by rising greenhouse gases. But temperatures actually turned out to be even hotter than predicted, and it’s unclear why.
El Niño is now being replaced by La Niña, during which much of the Pacific Ocean absorbs more heat than usual from the atmosphere. This may temporarily cool sea surface temperatures, but because sea surface temperatures are still at record levels, 2024 is likely to be even hotter than 2023.
Unusually warm May caused extreme heat and heat waves Heat waves are occurring in parts of the world, including large swaths of India, where temperatures in the capital Delhi reached a new record of 49.9°C (121.8°F) on May 28.
Howler monkeys in Mexico Falling from a tree and dying This heat has now spread to the northern United States during a prolonged heat wave.
Last year, a study warned that if the world exceeds the 1.5°C limit, heatwaves could become so intense that they cause mass deaths in places where people are not used to such heat and buildings are not designed with it in mind.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
