“The scientific evidence is overwhelming: records will continue to be broken and there will be more extreme weather events,” notes Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.
Higher temperatures, warmer oceans, more rainfall, more drought, more fires, less ice at the poles. The planet is saying goodbye to its hottest summer on record, and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has just put numbers on it, and worse. According to Samantha Burgess, deputy director of this Service: “The scientific evidence is overwhelming: records will continue to be broken and there will be more intense and frequent extreme weather events that will impact society and ecosystems until we stop emitting greenhouse gases”.
The June-July-August 2023 global temperature was 16.77°C, which is 0.66°C above average. In Europe it was a little worse: 19.63°C average temperature, with a 0.83°C increase.
With these data, the first eight months of 2023 already make it the second warmest year ever recorded on the planet, but it is only 0.01 degrees behind the first place, 2016, and still has four months to go.
The Copernicus database dates back to 1940, but can be compared to the climate of previous millennia, established thanks to tree rings and ice cores, and synthesized in the latest report by UN climate change experts (IPCC).
On this basis, “the three months we have just experienced are the warmest since about 120,000 years ago, that is, since the beginning of human history,” Burgess said.
“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting. Our planet has just endured a boiling season, the hottest summer ever recorded,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a statement Wednesday.
“Climate collapse has begun. Scientists have long warned what our addiction to fossil fuels will unleash,” Guterres said.
“Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope with extreme weather events affecting every corner of the planet. Rising temperatures demand greater action,” Guterres added.
If we focus on the month of August, according to Copernicus, it has been the warmest worldwide since records have been kept: 16.82°C average temperature, 1.5°C warmer than the average of the pre-industrial period, from 1850 to 1900; 0.71°C warmer than the period between 1991 and 2020, and 0.31°C warmer than the warmest August to date, that of 2016.
According to data just released by the State Meteorological Agency (SMA), Spain has just experienced the warmest August in its history: 24.8°C on average, which is 1.8°C above the average for this month in the 1991-2020 period. The average maximum temperature was also the highest in the historical series: 32.7 ºC. It was two tenths of a degree higher than August 2003, and 2.2 °C above the normal average. And the minimums were the same: 1.3°C above normal, only surpassed by August 2003 and August 2022.
This summer also saw above-average precipitation in most of Western Europe and Turkey, with record rainfall causing severe flooding in western and northeastern North America, parts of Asia, Chile, Brazil and northwestern Australia.
In contrast, Iceland, the Alpine Arc, northern Scandinavia, central Europe, much of Asia, Canada, southern North America and most of South America experienced the opposite, above-average drought, causing severe wildfires.
Heat waves affected multiple regions in the northern hemisphere, including southern Europe, southern United States and Japan. Temperatures well above average were recorded in Australia, several South American countries and around much of Antarctica.
In Spain, the highest temperatures occurred on the 10th, with 46.8 °C at Valencia airport, and 44.5 °C in the city. The 45 °C at Cordoba airport on the 11th, and 44.3 at Granada airport on the 9th were the second and third highest temperature records. Although eighteen stations recorded the highest daily maximum temperatures for an August month.
August 2023 saw wetter than average conditions across much of central Europe and Scandinavia, often with heavy rainfall leading to flooding. But in the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, Iceland and much of eastern Europe, including the southern Balkans, the weather was drier than average, increasing the chances of wildfires in France, Greece, Italy and Portugal.
In Spain, August was very dry, with an average rainfall of 10.1 mm, which represents 47% of the normal value usually recorded that month. It was the seventh driest August since 1961, and the third driest of the 21st century. However, in the Balearic Islands it was the third wettest August since 1961.
In the world’s oceans, every day, that is, from July 31 to August 31, 2023, global average temperatures exceeded the previous record of March 2016. The monthly average temperature was 20.98°C, more than half a degree above average.
In the North Atlantic, the previous daily record of 24.81°C, set in September 2022, was exceeded. On August 5, and almost every day since, it has remained above this level, reaching a new record of 25.19 °C on August 31.
“The warming of the oceans leads to a warming of the atmosphere and an increase in humidity, which leads to more intense rainfall and an increase in the energy available for tropical cyclones,” Burgess warned.
This overheating also affects biodiversity: “There are fewer nutrients in the ocean (…) and less oxygen,” which threatens the survival of fauna and flora, he added.
As for sea ice, in the Antarctic there was 12% less this August, making it the worst year since satellite observations began in the 1970s. The most affected sectors were the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, and in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean sectors, while concentrations were above average in the Bellingshausen-Amundsen Sea sector.
And while most of the central Arctic Ocean had sea ice concentrations 10% below average, there was slightly more in the Kara and Laptev Seas in Siberia.