PARIS: The third-hottest July worldwide ended a string of record-breaking temperatures, but many regions were devastated by extreme weather amplified by global warming, the European climate monitoring service said Thursday.
Heavy rains flooded Pakistan and northern China; Canada, Scotland and Greece struggled to tame wildfires intensified by persistent drought; and many nations in Asia and Scandinavia recorded new average highs for the month.
"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over," Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.
"But that does not mean climate change has stopped," he said. "We continue to witness the effects of a warming world."
As in June, July showed a slight dip compared to the preceding two years, averaging 1.25 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) era.
