This July was Earth’s third-warmest on record, EU scientists say
A woman covers herself from the sun as she browses a smartphone on a street during a hot day in Beijing on July 23.Andy Wong/AP
GREENWIRE | ROME — The world experienced its third-warmest July on record this year, the EU agency that tracks global warming said Thursday, with temperatures easing slightly for the month as compared with the record high two years ago.
Despite the slightly lower global average temperature, scientists said extreme heat and deadly flooding persisted in July.
"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over — for now. But this doesn't mean climate change has stopped," said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "We continued to witness the effects of a warming world."
The EU monitoring agency said new temperature records and more climate extremes are to be expected unless greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are brought down. On July 25, Turkey recorded its highest-ever temperature of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 degrees Fahrenheit) as it battled wildfires.
While not as hot as July 2023 or July 2024, the hottest and second-hottest on record, the Copernicus report said that the planet's average surface temperature last month was still 1.25 C (2.25 F) above the 1850-1900 preindustrial period, before humans began the widespread burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
...
