World swelters through its hottest summer on record for the second year running

The summer of 2024 was the hottest on record, according to the European Union’s climate monitor, extending an alarming run of temperature records that has put the planet firmly on course to notch its hottest year in human history.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Friday that the global average temperature for the boreal summer, which refers to the Northern Hemisphere’s June through August period, was the highest on record.

The summer months were found to be 0.69 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for the June-August period. It surpasses the previous record from June-August last year, which was 0.66 degrees Celsius above the average baseline.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said the world had experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record and the hottest boreal summer on record in the space of just three months.

“This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record,” Burgess said in a written statement.

“The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.

The data from C3S, which has been tracking the daily global mean temperature since 1940, comes after an unprecedented number of national heat records have been broken since the start of the year.

Extreme heat is made much more likely by the climate crisis, the chief driver of which is the burning of fossil fuels.

Scientists have repeatedly called for rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to stop global average temperatures rising.