This year's June was the hottest ever recorded in western Europe and the second-warmest globally at 1.39°C above the estimated pre-industrial average, according to the European Union's climate change services.
Record-breaking land temperatures coincided with the warmest June sea surface temperatures ever observed, stressing the continued accumulation of heat within the Earth's climate system, data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) published on Thursday reveal.
“Together, these records reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat. The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across Europe and beyond,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.
Western and central Europe experienced an intense late-June heatwave that shattered monthly and all-time temperature records in several countries, including Germany and the Czech Republic. The event followed an unusually severe heatwave in May and was followed with another beginning in early July, illustrating an increasingly persistent pattern of extreme summer heat.
