After a relentless heatwave baked areas of the US South, a leading climate expert of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said this July could likely be the planet's warmest month in hundreds of years. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made the statement during a meeting at NASA’s Washington headquarters that convened agency climate experts and other leaders. The meeting was also attended by NASA's administrator Bill Nelson and chief scientist and senior climate adviser Kate Calvin.
The meeting took place during a summer when the effects of the climate crisis were clearly on display. New England has been hit by deadly floods. US cities have been smothered by smoke from Canadian wildfires. Additionally, tens of thousands of people are now under heat advisories, and parts of the US South and West are experiencing record-breaking temperatures.
'Decade-on-decade increase in temperatures'
“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world. Though the changes may feel shocking, they are not a surprise to scientists. There has been a decade-on-decade increase in temperatures throughout the last four decades, Schmidt said as per The Guardian.
NASA's global temperature analysis found that June was the hottest month on record on the planet. According to Schmidt, all this heat is "certainly increasing the chances" that 2023 would break all previous records for the hottest year. According to some studies, there is as much as an 80% chances that Earth will break that record this year, despite his estimates showing Earth has a 50% chance of doing so.
As an El Nino weather pattern is likely to peak towards the end of this year, scientists anticipate that 2024 will be even hotter than 2023. According to Schmidt, the latest major El Nio from 2014 to 2016 caused each of those years to break the previous record for the planet's average temperature, with 2016 currently the Earth’s hottest year ever recorded.
At the meeting, experts sounded the alarm about the changes the planet is undergoing and said they are directly related to greenhouse gas emissions, but they refrained from mentioning the source of the majority of those emissions: fossil fuels.
WMO declares first week of July as hottest week
Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) claimed that the beginning of July 2023 was the hottest week on record for the planet. The WMO's report came after a string of hot days that caused global temperature records to tumble. In its report, the WMO said that the first week of July was the hottest on record following climate change and the initial stages of the El Nino weather pattern led to the warmest June on record.
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