Nasa: Hottest in hundreds, if not thousands of years
Published on: Saturday, July 22, 2023
By: AFP
2024 will be an even warmer year, starting off with El Nino event that’s building now which will peak towards the end of this year.
WASHINGTON: July 2023 will probably be the world’s hottest month in “hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” top Nasa climatologist Gavin Schmidt said.
This month has already seen daily records shattered according to tools run by the European Union and the University of Maine, which combine ground and satellite data into models to generate preliminary estimates.
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Though they differ slightly from one another, the trend of extreme heat is unmistakable and will likely be reflected in the more robust monthly reports issued later by US agencies, said Schmidt in a Nasa briefing with reporters.
“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world—the heat waves that we’re seeing in the US in Europe and in China are demolishing records, left, right and centre,” he added.
What’s more, the effects cannot be attributed solely to the El Nino weather pattern, which “has really only just emerged.”
Though El Nino is playing a small role, “what we’re seeing is the overall warmth, pretty much everywhere, particularly in the oceans. We’ve been seeing record-breaking sea surface temperatures, even outside of the tropics, for many months now.
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“And we will anticipate that is going to continue, and the reason why we think that’s going to continue, is because we continue to put greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.”
What is happening right now is increasing the chances that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, which Schmidt currently assigned a “50-50 chance” based on his calculations, though he said other scientists had placed it as high as 80 percent.
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“But we anticipate that 2024 will be an even warmer year, because we’re going to be starting off with that El Nino event that’s building now, and that will peak towards the end of this year.”
Schmidt’s warnings come as the world has been buffeted by fires and dire health warnings in the past week, in addition to broken temperature records.
Phoenix, like much of the US southwest, is surrounded by desert, and its 1.6 million residents are accustomed to brutal summer temperatures.
But this year’s heat wave is unprecedented in its length: it has already helped the city break its previous record of 18 straight days at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius), with similar highs forecast into next week.
Firefighters in Tunisia are battling a major blaze that has raged for two days in a pine forest near the border with Algeria.
A border crossing with Algeria had to close temporarily, according to Tunisian officials who confirmed 470 hectares (1,100 acres) of forest were burned, and that firefighters and an army helicopter were battling flames.
Greece is preparing for further high temperatures until Sunday, with peaks of 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) expected in the centre of the country on Thursday.
As Greece announced the restrictions, firefighters were still battling wildfires west of Athens, which have so far burned thousands of hectares (acres).
In Spain, the heat peak has passed, but temperatures remained high overall on Thursday, with readings above 25C recorded at 120 of the 900 stations in the official meteorological network.
The mercury did not fall below 30C in southern city of Malaga during a night described as “hellish” by the meteorological services—heat exceeded 39.5C by Thursday morning.
Temperatures in excess of 35C were forecast across the southern half of the country, leading authorities to warn of “very high to extreme” risk of fire.
Lloret de Mar, a popular tourist resort in France, is seeking ways to conserve its increasingly-sparse water supplies by switching off beachfront showers.
The heatwave left southeastern France facing increased risk of wildfire, but the situation could improve somewhat on Friday.
During the day, parts of southern France were experiencing temperatures often in excess of 35C—and up to 40C in some areas.
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