The forecast was made in response to the warmest summer ever recorded by the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring program.
According to Copernicus, temperatures were above average throughout most of Europe, even though the UK had its coolest summer since 2015.
Earlier this summer, temperatures in several parts of southern Europe dropped as low as the 40s, causing exceptional red weather alerts, droughts, and wildfire warnings in regions of Greece and Italy.
Just last year, temperatures and harsh weather caused by an El Nino temporarily boosted records.
However, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that the average temperature of this year’s northern meteorological summer—June, July, and August—was 16.8C.
Furthermore, from September 2023 to August 2024, the average global temperature was 0.7C higher than the average from 1991 to 2020, making it the warmest 12-month period on record.
Eastern Antarctica, Texas, Mexico, Canada, northeast Africa, Iran, China, Japan, and Australia all had above-average temperatures outside of Europe.
“Over the last three months of 2024, the world has witnessed the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” stated Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.
