June breaks global record as hottest month over the past year

Sifelani Tsiko
Innovations Editor

The average global temperature has been 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era for 12 successive months and June is the hottest on record, new data shows.

According to the new data issued by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the month was 1.5°C above the estimated June average for the years 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.

This is the 12th consecutive month to reach or break the 1.5°C threshold.

“These latest figures from the Copernicus Climate Change Service unfortunately highlight that we will be exceeding the 1.5°C level temporarily with increasing frequency every month,” said World Meteorological Organization (WMO) secretary-general Celeste Saulo.

“However, it is important to stress that temporary breaches do not mean that the 1.5°C goal is permanently lost because this refers to long-term warming over at least two decades.”

The new figures all show faltering efforts to limit the long-term global average surface temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century as made under the Paris Agreement.

The world faces devastating climate impacts with more extreme heatwaves, rainfall events and droughts and reductions in glaciers.

Extreme heat has resulted in an estimated 489 000 heat-related deaths per year between 2000 and 2019, according to a 2023 WMO report.

“The record sea surface temperature is also the highest value on record for June. These record-breaking temperatures are of great concern to vital marine ecosystems and they also provide energy to supercharge tropical cyclones – as we saw with Hurricane Beryl,” said Saulo.

Africa continues to bear the disproportionate brunt of global greenhouse gas emissions, and yet it is the least polluter.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), this is harming food security, ecosystems and economies, thereby fuelling displacement and migration and worsening the threat of conflict over dwindling resources.