The EU monitor Copernicus also said preliminary data showed Tuesday was the hottest day ever recorded -- beating the record set only the day before.
It's the latest in a series of records halfway through a year that has already seen a drought in Spain and fierce heat waves in China as well the United States.
"The month was the warmest June globally at just over 0.5 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, exceeding June 2019 -- the previous record -- by a substantial margin," the EU monitor said in a statement from its C3S climate unit.
Temperatures reached June records across northwest Europe while parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Asia and eastern Australia "were significantly warmer than normal", Copernicus noted.
On the other hand it was cooler than normal in western Australia, the western United States and western Russia, it said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said "the situation we are witnessing now is the demonstration that climate change is out of control".
He reiterated his wish that "developed countries can get to net zero emissions as close as possible to 2040 and the emerging economies as close as possible to 2050".
- 'Hottest day ever' -
The tumbling records reflect the impact of global warming driven by greenhouse gases released from human activity.
Copernicus told AFP preliminary data showed a global average temperature of 17.03 C on Tuesday, beating another record of 16.88 C already set on Monday.
For June, Copernicus noted that sea surface temperatures were higher globally than any previous June on record, with "extreme marine heat waves" around Ireland, Britain and the Baltic.
Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent for June since satellite observations began, at 17 percent below average.
C3S scientist Julien Nicolas told AFP the June record was driven largely by "very warm ocean surface temperatures" in the Pacific and Atlantic due to El Nino, a periodic warming phenomenon.
Marine heatwaves struck the Atlantic and low winds meant the warm surface did not mix with colder water deeper down.
"On top of that is this warming trend of the ocean absorbing 90 percent of heat released by human activity," he added.
The global temperature was 0.53 C above the 30-year average at an average of 16.51C (61.72 degrees Fahrenheit), he calculated.
"June 2023 is way above the others. This is the kind of anomaly we are not used to," Nicolas said.
Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the UN's World Meteorological Organization, warned on Monday that El Nino "will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean."
He urged governments "to mobilise preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems and our economies."
- Deadly heat waves -
El Nino is a naturally occurring pattern that drives increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.
In addition, human activity -- mainly the burning of fossil fuels -- emits roughly 40 billion tonnes of planet-warming CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
As well as withering crops, melting glaciers and raising the risk of wildfires, higher-than-normal temperatures also cause health problems ranging from heatstroke and dehydration to cardiovascular stress.
In the United States, local officials said last week that at least 13 people died from an extreme heatwave in Texas and Louisiana.
China issued its highest-level heat alert for northern parts of the country as Beijing baked in temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius.
After a record hot June in Britain, water use restrictions were imposed in parts of southeastern England, and Scotland put regions on water scarcity alert.
The world has warmed an average of nearly 1.2 C since the mid-1800s, unleashing extreme weather including more intense heatwaves, more severe droughts in some areas and storms made fiercer by rising seas.
World daily temperature records smashed -- here's how we know
Washington (AFP) July 7, 2023 -
World daily temperature records have been smashed this week, according to preliminary data.
The modeling tools that produced these estimates can provide an early warning of extreme heat events, even if they aren't as precise as monthly and yearly reports produced by leading agencies, say experts.
- Who is producing the data? -
The University of Maine has established an online tool called Climate Reanalyzer, which shows the curves of average global temperature for each day since 1979.
On Monday July 3, this curve reached a high of 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 degrees Fahrenheit). That record was surpassed on Tuesday with 17.18C (62.92F), and again on Thursday with 17.23C (63.01F).
Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which has a similar tool, later confirmed the records of Monday, then Tuesday, albeit with slightly different figures -- 16.88C (62.38F) and 17.03 (62.65F), respectively.
- How do they arrive at their figures? -
The estimates are produced through a combination of actual temperature measurements -- from ground stations, satellites, and more -- with computer modeling.
The two tools are conceptually similar but differ in their exact sources and methods, leading to the slightly different results.
The University of Maine relies on public model output data produced by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for forecasting.
NOAA, for its part, said that although it was seeing record warm surface temperatures being recorded at many locations across the globe, it could not "validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis."
NOAA instead vouches for its own monthly and annual temperature reports.
The fact that the both results converge is reassuring, Zeke Hausfather, a climatologist at Berkeley Earth told AFP.
The European tool is considered "very much state of the art," by the wider community, he added.
- What are the limitations? -
"These are estimates, unofficial records," University of Maine climate scientist Sean Birkel, who developed Climate Reanalyzer, told AFP.
"The greatest emphasis should be placed on an annual and monthly timescale," he added, with these reports subject to greater checks and verifications than is possible for daily records that rely on near real-time information.
On Thursday, Copernicus separately released its analysis for the past month, announcing it was the hottest June on record. A similar monthly report from NOAA is expected next week.
These reports are based "solely on observations" from the land and sea, and gather far more data points, explained Hausfather.
In general, climate experts prefer to focus on long-term trends and changes, in order to eliminate variations simply related to weather.
What's more, the concept of a global average temperature is a bit abstract and not necessarily as meaningful for the general public.
"No one lives in the global average," said Hausfather.
- What is the value of daily record estimates? -
Despite these limitations, the value of daily records is "we can start to identify extreme events," which could have climate significance, said Birkel.
Though temperature at the daily timescale is weather, not climate, adding in 40 years' worth of data provides important climate context, he says.
"These provisional records provide another piece of evidence of the global climate pattern shifts due to climate change and the evolving El Nino episode," said Omar Baddour, chief of climate monitoring at the World Meteorological Organization.
"I think this is a sign that we're heading into a very hot period. June was the warmest June on record by a pretty big margin," said Hausfather. "At this point, it looks increasingly likely that 2023 as a whole will be the warmest year since records began in the mid 1800s."
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