(Washington) NASA’s chief climate scientist said Thursday that July 2023 will likely be the hottest month for several “hundreds, if not thousands” of years around the world.
Several heat records have already been broken in July, according to two tools from the European Union and the University of Maine in the US, which combine ground and satellite data to create models that generate preliminary estimates.
While the two instruments differ slightly from each other, warming trends are unequivocal and will likely be reflected in future monthly reports from US agencies, with more standardized data, Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s chief climate scientist, said in an exchange with reporters.
On Wednesday, the European Observatory Copernicus has already warned that the world is on course to experience the hottest month of July since measurements began, after an already record month in June.
We are witnessing unprecedented changes all over the world.
Gavin Schmidt, chief climate scientist at NASA
“Heat waves in the United States, Europe and China are breaking records,” he added.
Moreover, they cannot be attributed only to El Niño, “which has just arrived.”
El Niño is a periodic weather phenomenon that originates in the Pacific Ocean and causes a rise in global temperatures, accompanied by drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains in others.
Although El Niño plays a small role in the current observations, “we’ve been seeing sea surface temperature records shattering, even outside the tropics, for many months,” said Gavin Schmidt.
“And we expect that to continue because we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” the climate scientist added.
Current phenomena increase the possibility that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. Such a probability is currently “50-50” according to Gavin Schmidt’s calculations. But he said other scientists suggest a probability of up to 80%.
“We expect 2024 to be a warmer year, as we will start with the El Niño phenomenon that is building up at the moment, which will peak at the end of this year,” said Gavin Schmidt.
