August Ties for Hottest Month on Record as Global Heat Climbs – BBC News
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Climate Change
August was joint hottest month ever recorded, tying with July 2023, according to the EU’s climate service.
The record was driven by a combination of climate change and the rising influence of El Niño, pushing heat into the atmosphere across the Pacific.
Temperatures for the month were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels—surpassing the critical 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. While a single month above 1.5C does not mean it has been permanently crossed, it shows a trend towards breaching that limit.
The month also capped western Europe’s warmest summer, with high temperatures pushing the season past the deadly heat of 2003.
"This is the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling," said UN climate chief Simon Stiell.
On top of the ongoing impact of the use of fossil fuels, the rise of a powerful El Niño is making matters worse, researchers have said. El Niño is a natural climate pattern that releases vast amounts of stored ocean heat into the atmosphere, nudging global temperatures upwards for around a year. The current El Niño is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record.
This prospect follows a summer that drove western Europe to its warmest on record, mirrored in the UK, which had its hottest summer since records began in 1884.
