A Record-Breaking Summer

This year, the world experienced its hottest June, July, and August ever. July remains the warmest month in history. Throughout that month, more than 6.5 billion people – approximately 81% of the global population – faced climate change-attributed heat.

The average global temperature between June and August 2023 was 16.77C (62.18F), 0.66C above the 1990-2020 average, making this summer the hottest ever recorded by a “large margin.” In Europe – the world’s fastest-warming continent, warming twice as fast as any other continent – temperatures were 0.83C above average at around 19.63C (67.33F).

“2023 has now had six record breaking months and two record breaking seasons. The extraordinary global November temperatures, including two days warmer than 2ºC above preindustrial, mean that 2023 is the warmest year in recorded history,” said Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess.

The extreme weather the world witnessed this year can be attributed to various factors, including natural variations like the influential El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which has significantly altered global weather patterns and pushed global temperatures “off the charts.” The biggest culprit, however, remains humanity’s insatiable consumption of fossil fuels, which is associated with the release of huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This year, fossil fuels accounted for over 70% of energy supply globally.

Emissions have been at an all-time high of about 54 billion tons/year for about ten years, leading to an unprecedented increase in human-induced warming of over 0.2C per decade; if current emissions levels persist, humanity will likely reach 1.5C of warming – a threshold set by 195 governments in the 2015 Paris Agreement beyond which humanity will start experiencing severe climate damages across a wide range of ecosystem – in six years’ time.

“As long as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising we can’t expect different outcomes from those seen this year,” said Carlo Buontempo, C3S Director. “The temperature will keep rising and so will the impacts of heatwaves and droughts. Reaching net zero as soon as possible is an effective way to manage our climate risks.”