Europe has endured a summer of scorching heat, with deadly heatwaves and extreme weather gripping the continent from June onwards. This unprecedented heat has led to the summer of 2024 being declared the hottest on record by the European climate service Copernicus.
Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo, echoing the concerns of many climate scientists, initially hesitated to declare 2024 the hottest year on record due to the record-breaking heat of August 2023. However, August 2024 mirrored the extreme temperatures of 2023, leading Buontempo to confidently conclude that 2024 will likely become the hottest year on record. “In order for 2024 not to become the warmest on record, we need to see very significant landscape cooling for the remaining few months, which doesn’t look likely at this stage,” he stated.
The northern meteorological summer, encompassing June, July, and August, averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius, according to Copernicus data, exceeding the previous record set in 2023 by a mere 0.03 degrees Celsius. While Copernicus records date back to 1940, historical data from the United States, Britain, and Japan, dating back to the mid-19th century, indicate that the last decade has been the warmest since the beginning of regular measurements and likely the warmest in the past 120,000 years, according to some scientists.
The months of August in both 2024 and 2023 tied for the hottest Augusts globally, reaching 16.82 degrees Celsius. While July 2024 fell slightly short of the record set in 2023, the exceptionally hot June of 2024 ensured that this summer, overall, became the hottest ever recorded.
“What those sober numbers indicate is how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us,” warned Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. While a portion of last year’s record heat was attributed to a La Niña event, a temporary natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific that influences global weather patterns, that effect has dissipated. This highlights that the primary driver of the relentless heat is long-term human-caused climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas, according to Buontempo.
“It’s really not surprising that we see this, this heat wave, that we see these temperature extremes,” Buontempo remarked. “We are bound to see more.”
With the forecast of a La Niña event, a natural cooling phenomenon in the central Pacific, the final four months of the year may not witness record-breaking temperatures like much of the past 18 months. However, it is unlikely that this cooling will be sufficient to prevent 2024 from surpassing the annual temperature record, Buontempo cautioned.
These temperature records are not mere numbers in a record book; they represent real-world weather events that inflict harm on people, climate scientists emphasize. “This all translates to more misery around the world as places like Phoenix start to feel like a barbecue locked on high for longer and longer stretches of the year,” explained Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and a renowned climate scientist. Phoenix, Arizona, has experienced over 100 days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) this year.
“With longer and more severe heat waves come more severe droughts in some places, and more intense rains and flooding in others. Climate change is becoming too obvious, and too costly, to ignore.”
Few regions in Europe escaped the clutches of heatwaves and extreme weather this summer. Even the usually temperate [insert location name] couldn’t escape the relentless heat. Heatwaves struck [insert location name], tragically resulting in the deaths of five tourists within a few weeks.
Just weeks later, four people lost their lives in Italy when temperatures soared to 38 degrees Celsius.
These heatwaves disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. By August, France, one of the better-prepared European countries following a deadly heatwave in 2003, experienced its [insert specific event].
