For 12 consecutive months, global temperatures have been more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels.
Global temperatures hit record levels in June for the 13th consecutive month, according to data from European climate service Copernicus, which is sounding the alarm about a warming climate.
June also marked the 12th consecutive month that the world was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in the pre-industrial era, Copernicus said in an announcement Monday.
He said global temperatures averaged 16.66°C (62°F) last month, which was 0.67 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average for the month.
It broke the record for the warmest June, set a year earlier, by 0.14 degrees Celsius. It was the third warmest month recorded by Copernicus since 1940, behind only last July and August.
“This is more than a statistical oddity and highlights a continuing change in our climate,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
Nicolas Julien, a senior climate scientist at Copernicus, said in an interview that it was “a stark warning” as it indicated the world was nearing the 1.5 degree limit that most countries agreed to as part of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent catastrophic climate change.
“Records have been broken by very substantial margins over the last 13 months,” he said.
However, this does not mean that the Paris agreement has already failed, because its 1.5 degree threshold is measured in averages achieved over decades, not individual months or years.
But Julien said it has already resulted in more “extreme weather events,” including worsening floods, storms, droughts and heat waves.
June's heat hit hard in southeastern Europe, Turkey, eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, North Africa and western Antarctica, according to Copernicus.
The European Union's flagship Earth observation programme said June was also the 15th consecutive month that the world's oceans – more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface – broke heat records.
To reach its conclusions, Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world to track climate metrics and analyse them with computer simulations.
Buontempo said the current record streak of extreme heat could end soon, but new records are sure to be broken in the near future as the climate continues to warm.
“This is inevitable unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and oceans,” he said.
