June hottest on record, beating 2023 high: EU climate monitor

People cool off in misters along the Las Vegas Strip, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Las Vegas

Last month was the hottest June on record across the globe, the EU's climate monitor said Monday, capping half a year of wild and destructive weather from floods to heatwaves.

Every month since June 2023 has eclipsed its own temperature record in a 13-month streak of unprecedented global heat, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

"This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a large and continuing shift in our climate," said the service director, Carlo Buontempo.

"Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm."

This was "inevitable" as long as humanity kept adding heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, he said.

The global average temperature notched last month broke the previous June record set in 2023.

The fresh high came at the midway point of a year marked by climate extremes.

Scorching heat has blanketed swathes of the world from India to Saudi Arabia, the United States and Mexico in the first half of this year.

Relentless rain, a phenomena scientists have also linked to a warmer planet, caused extensive flooding in Kenya, China, Brazil, Afghanistan, Russia and France.

Wildfires have torched land in Greece and Canada and last week, Hurricane Beryl became the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane on record as it barrelled across several Caribbean islands.

  Warmer oceans 

The streak of record-breaking temperatures coincided with El Nino, a natural phenomenon that contributes to hotter weather globally, said Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at C3S.

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