July 2019 was Earth’s hottest month on record

Surface temperature anomaly for July 2019 – Copernicus

Brussels: July 2019 was the warmest month on record in absolute terms across the globe, data released by the European Union’s satellite-based Earth observation network reveals.

“July is typically the warmest month of the year in the global average. July 2016 was previously the warmest of any month on record in absolute terms. It has now been replaced by July 2019, albeit by a margin that is small compared with the typical differences between datasets for previous Julys,” the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Union, said as it announced record temperatures for July on a global level.

“Compared to the latest standard thirty-year climatological reference period, 1981-2010, July was about 0.56 °C degrees above average. This is close to 1.2°C above the pre-industrial level as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and about 0.04 °C warmer than July 2016, the previous warmest July in this data record.”

The C3S data show that the margin between the temperatures for July 2019 and temperatures for July 2016 is very small. Typically, there is a difference between the values provided by the global temperature datasets of various institutions, and the C3S difference between July 2019 and 2016 temperatures is smaller than this margin.

Temperatures in July were the most above the 1981-2010 average over Alaska, Baffin Island and Greenland, parts of Siberia, the central Asian Republics and Iran, as well as large parts of Antarctica.

Africa and Australia were above average over almost all of each continent.

Areas with temperatures below the 1981-2010 average include mid-western Canada and parts of Asia, and over the Weddell Sea and inland from there over Antarctica.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service also revealed that besides seeing an extraordinarily warm July, the year 2019 has been a very warm one so far. C3S data show that all months of 2019 are ranking among the four warmest for the month in question and that June 2019 was the warmest June on record.

“While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally by a very small margin. With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future,” Jean-Noël Thépaut, Head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), said:

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) routinely publishes monthly climate bulletins reporting on the changes observed in global surface air temperature and other climate variables.

All the reported findings are based on computer-generated analyses using billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.