June 2023 did not seem like an extraordinary month at the time. It was the hottest June on instruments Temperature RecordsBut monthly records have not been uncommon at a time when the top 10 warmest years on record have all occurred in the past 15 years. And monthly records have often occurred in years that are not otherwise exceptional; at that time, the warmest July on record occurred in 2019, a year that is not much different from the rest of the past decade.
But July 2023 set another monthly record, easily beating the 2019 high. Then August set another monthly record. And every month since then has done the same — a series of records that has made 2023 the hottest year since tracking began.
On Wednesday, the European Union’s Earth observation service Copernicus said, announced the There’s now been an entire year where every month has been the hottest version of that month since there have been enough instruments to track global temperatures.
Monthly temperature history shows how extreme temperatures have been over the past year.Courtesy of C3S/ECMWF
As you can see from this graph, most years have a mix of temperatures—some above average, some below average. There are clusters of months with exceptionally high temperatures, but those clusters are smaller than the entire year.
In the Copernicus data, a similar year-long streak of records occurred once before, in 2015/2016. NASA, which uses slightly different data and methods, shows no such streak in that earlier period. NASA has not yet released its results for May temperatures – they are expected in the next few days – but it is very likely that the results will also show a year-long streak of records.
Off the record, the EU is highlighting the fact that the one-year period ending in May was 1.63 degrees Celsius above the average temperature of the period 1850-1900, which is used as the baseline for pre-industrial temperatures. This is notable because many countries have explicitly pledged to try to keep temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial conditions by the end of the century. While it is likely that temperatures will drop below the target again in the next few years, the new records show that we have a very limited time before temperatures consistently exceed the target.
For the first time in record, temperatures have remained stable at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.Courtesy of C3S/ECMWF
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24007991/acastro_STK082_qualcomm_01.jpg "Qualcomm agrees to million settlement over complaints it misled shareholders")