Hello!
It’s getting hot out here as the world has just experienced yet another month of record-breaking temperatures.
The European Union’s climate change monitoring service said it was the hottest April on record, extending an 11-month streak in which every month set a temperature record.
Each month since June 2023 has ranked as the planet’s hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.
Including April, the world’s average temperature was the highest on record for a 12-month period – 1.61 degrees Celsius above the average in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period.
Some of the extremes – including months of record-breaking sea surface temperatures – have led scientists to investigate whether human activity has now triggered a tipping point in the climate system.
“I think many scientists have asked the question whether there could be a shift in the climate system,” said Julien Nicolas, C3S Senior Climate Scientist.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.
In recent months, the natural El Nino phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, has also raised temperatures.
The El Nino weather pattern should fade out by June but could be replaced by the La Nina phenomenon by the second half of the year, a U.S. government forecaster said.
There is a 49% chance that the La Nina weather pattern may develop during the June to August period, rising to 69% in July-September, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in its monthly forecast. Scroll on for the full Reuters feature.
