REM: Hottest summer ever as climate extremes accelerate

Summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere broke records for the second year in a row, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

This year saw the hottest June and August, tied with the summer of 2023, according to new data released on September 9.

Additionally, August was the 13th time global temperatures were higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the world’s pre-industrial average. That is the threshold above which, the Paris Agreement has agreed, catastrophic global heating will occur.

The year so far as a whole has broken records too.

The global mean temperature anomaly for January-August 2024 was 0.70°C above the 1991-2020 average. This is the highest anomaly on record for this period and 0.23°C warmer than the same period in 2023, said Copernicus.