August hottest month on record was confirmed by climate scientists, who said the heat’s impacts are increasingly hitting communities, economies and ecosystems worldwide.
Dr. Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, called August “a remarkable month in the global climate record,” noting that record air temperatures, record ocean heat and Europe’s exceptional summer show how climate change is now driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the new mark underscores humanity’s influence on the climate. “The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling,” he said.
August hottest month on record and El Niño’s role
Researchers said a strengthening El Niño is adding to the heat already driven by the long-term buildup from fossil fuel use. El Niño is a natural climate pattern in which unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific release vast amounts of stored ocean heat into the atmosphere, pushing global temperatures higher for roughly a year.
The current event is still intensifying and could become one of the strongest on record, according to the Copernicus team. Scientists expect its biggest boost to global temperatures to arrive over the coming year, suggesting the recent streak of records may continue. Recent research has found that heat-related deaths vastly exceed official counts, underscoring the human toll of such extremes.
El Niño outlooks from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate that monitoring will continue as global temperatures respond to the evolving pattern.
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