Climate change. July 2023 was the warmest month on record

The average global air temperature in July 2023 was the highest ever recorded. Globally, last month was 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the multi-year average of 1991-2020, and 0.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous record-breaking July of 2019, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported last month.

Normally, the average temperature on Earth in July is around 16 degrees Celsius. This year it reached almost 17 degrees Celsius.

“The recorded values ​​place this month with a temperature near the anomaly of 1.5 degrees C relative to the average of 1850-1900, which is a kind of reference point for assessing modern climate change” – commented the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management.

Scientists already reported at the end of July that it will probably turn out to be the warmest month on record. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said that the era of global warming was over and “the era of global upheaval has arrived.”

The values ​​of air temperature in southern Europe were much higher than the long-term averages. There were heat waves – from Spain in the west to the Balkans in the east. Many local temperature records were recorded, such as 48 degrees C in Sardinia or 47 degrees C at the station in Palermo in Sicily. In Greece, the air temperature reached 46 degrees Celsius.

Heat waves were recorded in many regions of the northern hemisphere in July – especially in southern Europe – which translated into dramatic events, including forest fires. The Greek island of Rhodes was particularly affected by the vegetation fires.

Waves of unusual heat occurred in many regions of the northern hemisphere, especially in the south of our continent, which translated into extensive forest fires. Temperatures well above average were also recorded in several countries in South America and around Antarctica. El Niño intensity continued to develop in the eastern equatorial Pacific.

According to Michał Marosz, Head of the Department of Meteorology and Climatology IMGWin the near future, taking into account the intensification of this phenomenon, overlapping with the global increase in air temperature, we can probably expect further records.

According to early, less precise climate data, obtained from ice cores and tree rings, our planet has not been this warm for 120,000 years.

Read also: Why is this year so hot?

In most of northern Europe, the air temperature was close to or lower than the long-term average.

We also dealt with such a situation in Poland, where the temperature, compared to the averages from the years 1991-2020, was clearly higher only in central and southern Poland (from 1 ° C). However, in most of our country, the temperature turned out to be 0.5-1 degrees Celsius higher. On the coast of the Baltic Sea, the temperature values ​​were close to the long-term average, locally even slightly lower.

– This year’s July, although it should be considered the warmest in the global assessment, shows that thermal conditions are still strongly differentiated, and the rate of temperature changes is characterized by regional and subregional differences – commented the deputy director of IMGW-PIB, permanent representative of Poland in the World Meteorological Organization, Professor Mirosław Burbot.

He added that “at the same time, we were able to follow the course of the heat wave in southern Europe, tragic fires, dysfunctions of municipal infrastructure and so on, on an ongoing basis, almost online.” – Contemporary global climate change shows that it is a civilization challenge already at this stage of its development – he said.