Paris, France:
Last month was the hottest June on record in North America, stoked by a deadly heatwave searing across components of the area, the European Union’s climate monitoring service reported Wednesday, saying it illustrates the impacts of international warming.
Record-breaking heat scorched from the southwest to the northwest of the United States and into Canada, exactly where the all-time record everyday temperature was broken 3 days in a row in British Columbia.
The area was 1.2 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1991-2020 typical in June, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
“These heatwaves are not happening in a vacuum. They are happening in a global climate environment that is warming and which makes them more likely to occur,” stated C3S climate scientist Julien Nicolas.
Globally, June 2021 joins the exact same month in 2018 as the fourth warmest June.
It was the second warmest June on record for Europe, although northern Siberia also saw particularly higher summer season temperatures.
It is currently nicely understood that heatwaves are occurring more often, are more intense, and are lasting longer than they did in the previous, Nicolas told AFP.
“The heatwaves that we saw last month in North America, western Russia and northern Siberia are just the latest examples of a trend that is projected to continue into the future and is tied to the warming of our global climate,” he stated.
Threats to life
The regions impacted also had unusually dry soils, according to a report from C3S, which noted that each wildfires and heat “posed threats to life”.
Dozens of fires have ripped across components of Canada in current days, fuelled by the deadly heatwave and tinder-dry circumstances.
“What happened in Canada was a big jump with respect to the previous record,” stated Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S.
“These hot records are a powerful reminder of the impact climate change could have on our lives,” he told AFP.
The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for capping the boost in international temperatures at “well below” two degrees Celsius, and 1.5 degrees if attainable.
Human activity has driven international temperatures up some 1.1 degrees Celsius so far, stoking increasingly fierce storms, intense heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
In May, the World Meterological Organization and Britain’s Met Office stated there was a 40 % possibility of the annual typical international temperature temporarily surpassing 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures inside the next 5 years.
The previous six years, which includes 2020, have been the six warmest on record.
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