The global average temperature for July 2023 was the highest on record and likely for at least 120,000 years, the UN weather agency and partners said on August 8.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director at the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that the month is estimated to have been around 1.5 degree Celsius warmer than the average for 1815 to 1900, so the average for pre-industrial times.
Speaking to media in Geneva, Burgess noted that July had been marked by heat waves in multiple regions around the world. Based on data analysis known as proxy records, which include cave deposits, calcifying organisms, coral and shells, the Copernicus scientist added that the planet has not been this warm for the last 120,000 years.
Records were also broken for global sea surface temperatures, after unusually high temperatures in April that led to the ocean surface warming in July to some 0.51 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.
Chris Hewitt, Director of Climate Services, UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that 2015 to 2022 were the eight warmest years, as per readings going back at least 170 years. He added that the long-term warming trend is driven by continued increases in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that have all reached record observed highs.
