(WASHINGTON) July 2023 will be the warmest for “hundreds, thousands of years” around the world, NASA’s chief climatologist said Thursday.
Several heat records have already been broken in July, according to two instruments from the EU and the University of Maine in the US, which combine ground and satellite data to create models that generate preliminary estimates.
Although the two instruments are slightly different from each other, rising temperature trends are unmistakable and will be reflected in future monthly reports from US agencies, with more integrated data, NASA’s chief climatologist Gavin Schmidt said in an exchange with reporters.
On Wednesday, the European observatory Copernicus had already warned that the world was on track to experience its warmest July since June, when measurements began.
We are witnessing unprecedented changes throughout the world.
Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s chief climatologist
“The United States, Europe and China are experiencing record breaking heat waves,” he added.
Especially since the El Nino phenomenon cannot be attributed solely to “it just arrived”.
El Niño is a cyclical weather phenomenon that originates in the Pacific Ocean and causes global temperatures to rise, accompanied by drought in some parts of the world and heavy rain in others.
Although El Niño plays a small role in current observations, “we’ve seen sea surface temperature records being broken for months even outside the tropics,” Gavin Schmidt said.
“We expect that to continue because we continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
Current events increase the likelihood that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. Such a probability is currently “50-50” according to Gavin Schmidt’s calculations. But other scientists suggest a probability of up to 80%, he said.
“We expect 2024 to be an even warmer year because we’ll start it off with an El Nino event developing at this time and it will peak later in the year,” said Gavin Schmidt.
