Pedestrians hold umbrellas for protection from the sun during a heat wave in New York, US, on Thursday, July 27, 2023. Given that the Northern Hemisphere experienced unprecedented weather this past summer, South Africa should be on high alert this El Niño summer. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
July, which was characterised by extreme heat over three continents, is set to be the hottest month on record, scientists said.
On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a joint statement that the first three weeks of July has been the warmest three-week period on record.
“It is extremely likely that July 2023 will be the hottest July and also the hottest month on record, following on from the hottest June on record.” The previous hottest month on record was July 2019.
These temperatures, they said, were related to blistering heatwaves in large parts of North America, Asia and Europe, which along with wildfires in countries including Canada and Greece, have had major impacts on human health, the environment and economies.
Humanity is in the “hot seat”, said UN secretary-general António Guterres. “Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board. … Climate change is here. It’s terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”
Shattering records
On 6 July, the daily average global mean surface air temperature surpassed the record set in August 2016, making it the hottest day on record, with 5 July and 7 July shortly behind.
The new data showed that July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded, the three hottest days on record and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of year. Since May, the global average sea surface temperature has been well above previously observed values for the time of the year, contributing to the exceptionally warm July.
Global mean temperature temporarily exceeded the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial level during the first and third week of the month “within observational error”.
According to the WMO, there is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest on record and a 66% chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C above the 1850 to 1900 average for at least one of the five years. This, it said, does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Climate Agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years.
Tens of thousands of years
On Thursday, preliminary analysis by Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Leipzig in Germany, found that global average near-surface temperature in July will exceed the previous warmest July by a considerable margin.
Haustein’s analysis determined that July will be more than 0.2°C warmer than July 2019, which is the current warmest. It is therefore virtually certain that July 2023 will set a new global temperature record, he said.
The analysis is based on preliminary temperature data and weather models, including forecast temperatures through the end of this month, but validated by unaffiliated scientists.
“Not only will it be the warmest July, but the warmest month ever in terms of absolute global mean temperature. We may have to go back thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years to find similarly warm conditions on our planet.”
He said the record July comes as El Niño has just been declared in the tropical Pacific. While contributing to the warmth, the “fundamental reason for why we are seeing such
records is the continued release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases by humans”.
Since the effects of El Niño only fully emerge in the second half of the year, June — and
now July — are likely followed by more record warm months up until at least early 2024, he said.
Urgent call to action
Haustein’s analysis confirms what climate scientists have long been saying, said Tafadzwa Mabhaudhi, an academic in climate change and food systems at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
“However, science alone is not enough; science has always been clear about the impacts of global emissions and warming on climate. What has lagged is the ambition and commitment to make the tough decisions needed to halt global emissions and save both people and the planet.
“There is an urgent call to action; we all have a responsibility to change our behaviour and hold leadership accountable so that we change the course of ongoing climate change — there is still time for action but the window to act is fast narrowing.”
‘New normal’
Climatologist Francois Engelbrecht, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, said: “We’re living in an era of more frequent extreme events so, increasingly, we will have to deal with extreme temperature events, that are also unprecedented in the historical record, as a new normal.
“… As long as global warming continues, we should expect more heatwaves that last longer and that are more intense. So, we shouldn’t feel that what we are experiencing now will be how it is over the next 10 to 20 years.”
It will get worse and that’s the hard reality, Engelbrecht said, noting this is “just the beginning of a new era of unprecedented temperature increases across the world”.
Southern Africa needs to prepare for the more frequent occurrence of unprecedented heat and, in South Africa’s case, for a generally drier climate “although, at the same time, with the more frequent occurrence of extreme rainfall events in the eastern part of the country”.
Although rainfall totals are projected to systematically decrease over time across the region, “we should at the same time prepare for more intense rainfall … In a warmer world, the storm systems become more intense. It rains less, but when it rains, it rains more intensely than in the past,” Engelbrecht added.
Records tumbling
Stephanie Midgley, a researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative, said that the monthly global temperature for July 2023 is on track to shatter the previous record for the warmest July by an exceptionally large margin.
“Many associated records have tumbled, including the hottest day on record globally, the highest average global ocean temperature (especially in the North Atlantic) and an extremely low Antarctic sea ice extent. Dangerous heatwaves are gripping North America, southern Europe and China.”
While the unfolding El Niño in the tropical Pacific is probably a contributing factor, scientists from the World Weather Attribution Initiative have determined that without human-induced climate change (from fossil fuel combustion releasing greenhouse gases) these heatwaves and record temperatures would have been extremely rare (China) if not virtually impossible (North America and Europe), she said.
The increasing heat is very much in line with what the global climate models have forecast, although at the higher end of how quickly the changes were expected, she said.
“Without very rapid reductions in fossil fuel use, the trend will continue and lead to more future record-breaking heat. It is now imperative to rapidly reduce and stop the burning of fossil fuels to secure a liveable planet for all.
“Heat action plans are also essential to protect lives.”