July 8 (UPI) — June 2024 was hotter than any June previously on record, leaving people exposed to life-threatening temperatures and more extreme weather, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Monday.
Copernicus researchers found that temperatures worldwide each month for the past 12 months were 1.5 degrees Celsius greater than the average before the pre-industrial age.
The report said temperatures in Europe were higher on average than in the southeast regions. It added the countries and regions with the hottest temperatures outside of Europe were eastern Canada, the western United States, western Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, northern Africa, and western Antarctica.
“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,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, according to The Guardian.
“This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans.”
The report said its review of the oceans, air temperatures were higher than average in the Atlantic and Indian oceans along with most of the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures were below average in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and smaller regions around the world, like the Bering Sea.
Copernicus uses measurements from various sources, including airplanes, weather stations, ships and satellites to capture vital climate information worldwide.
“This is not good news at all,” said Aditi Mukherji, the co-author of the newest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We know that extreme events increase with every increment of global warming and at 1.5 degrees Celsius, we witnessed some of the hottest extremes this year.”