Global temperatures smash records for 12 months in a row

Every month over the past year has seen temperatures break previous records, in what the director of Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) calls a "shocking" 12-month streak.

Temperatures in May broke records for the 12th month in a row, reaching 1.52 degrees Celsius (2.74 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, according to C3S data released on Wednesday. It marks the 11th month that temperatures have climbed beyond 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. 

"While this sequence of record-breaking months will eventually be interrupted, the overall signature of climate change remains and there is no sign in sight of a change in such a trend," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo. 

In 2015, governments agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees as part of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Average global temperatures over the past 12 months reached 1.63 degrees above levels measured around 1850 to 1900, before industrialization. However, it does not mean the 1.5 limit is broken – average temperatures are measured over decades rather than individual years. So far, the global average temperatures rise is estimated to be 1.2 - 1.3 degrees.

Human-driven warming

2023 was the hottest year on record with temperatures fueled by climate change – driven by human burning of fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas, but also influenced by the naturally occurring El Nino phenomenon, which typically increases temperatures.

Still, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said in a report, also released on Wednesday, that at least one year in the next five to 2028 was likely to beat the 2023 record, exceeding 1.5 degrees.

"For the past year, every turn of the calendar has turned up the heat. Our planet is trying to tell us something, but we don't seem to be listening," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs, we are the meteor. We are not only in danger, we are the danger. But we are also the solution."

Global warming is leading to more extreme weather patterns with climate change linked to longer and hotter heat waves, in some cases heavier rainfall, drought, and the conditions driving wildfires.

In India, the past weeks has seen unrelenting heat waves, with temperatures soaring to around 50 degrees in some parts, killing at least 50 people, causing a spike in heat strokes and forcing schools to close in some cities and towns.

It's having a particular impact in the informal working sector, which engages around 90% of the workforce. Frontline workers, laborers and farmers often have no access to cooling systems, like air conditioning, and are unable to avoid the extreme heat, said Avantika Goswami, program manager on climate change at research organization, the Center for Science and Environment India.

"They are absolutely exposed to the elements," she told DW. "Heat stress is not just a huge productivity challenge in terms of workforce and the consequent economic impacts, but also a huge public health crisis."

Affecting the most vulnerable

Extreme weather events are also having a huge impact elsewhere. In Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, rainfall was estimated by climate attribution scientists, who study the links between extreme weather and climate change, to have been made twice as likely to occur and up to six percent heavier as a result of global warming.

The rainfall led to severe flooding, which affected an area the size of the United Kingdom, and displaced around 600,000 people.

Heavy rain, flooding and mudslides ravaged the south of the state of Rio Grande do Sul Image: ANSELMO CUNHA/AFP

But it is the most vulnerable – older people, those with disabilities, and children – who are most at risk of the consequences of climate change.

Around 1.2 million children are estimated to be living in areas highly sensitive to climate change, but it is the under-fives that are most at risk, said Revati Phalkey, Global Director for Health and Nutrition at NGO Save the Children International.

"Children born now will be exposed to more frequent, more intense and more severe extreme weather events," she told DW. "Very young children have limited capacity to regulate their body temperatures and that is what causes heat stress more often in them because they are not able to cope as well as adults can."

International climate action

Dried up riverbeds and lakes are a testament to hotter temperaturesImage: PAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images

More than 6,000 delegates are currently taking part in climate talks in Bonn, Germany, to set the groundwork for a new finance goal that is due to be decided at the COP 29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, later this year.

Developing countries, which have contributed the least to climate change, disproportionately face the biggest impacts. Governments in these nations are calling for more money to enable them to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but also to help communities cope with extreme weather events.

Speaking at the conference, Goswami, who lives in New Delhi, and has personally experienced the high temperatures there, said there is little understanding in industrialized countries around the scale of the impacts people are experiencing.

"There's a collective inertia born from this inability to understand how there is a very direct link between their past and present actions and the suffering we are going through today," she added.

As well as calling for an increase in funding, Goswami says there needs to be a complete phase out of fossil fuels – with the space for developing countries to transition gradually. 

While it would not stop temperatures rising in the short term due to carbon dioxide concentrations already in the atmosphere, in the long term an end to the burning of fossil fuels is what it will take to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Edited by: Sarah Steffen

Sources:

Copernicus Climate Change Service
https://climate.copernicus.eu/hottest-may-record-spurs-call-climate-action

World Meteorological Organization

World Weather Attribution
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-made-the-floods-in-southern-brazil-twice-as-likely/