'Time for Urgent Action Is Right Now': Summer 2024 Was Hottest on Record

Scientists with the European Union's climate service said Friday that Earth experienced its hottest summer on record for the second consecutive year in 2024 as unprecedented and deadly heatwaves scorched large swaths of the planet, intensifying the urgency of large-scale policy changes to phase out the fossil fuels that are driving temperatures to alarming new heights.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said the three-month period between June and August saw global-average temperatures that were 0.69°C, or 1.24°F, higher than the average summer temperatures seen from 1991 to 2020.

"During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record," said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess. "This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record."

"The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet, unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess added.

Temperatures in Europe were 1.54°C above the 1991-2020 average, a record temperature surge that had deadly consequences in Greece, Italy, and other nations.

But The Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan noted that the consequences of the record-shattering summer heat "were felt by people on every continent, from world-class athletes competing in the Paris Olympics to refugees fleeing from wars."

She continued:

Wildfires fueled by heat and drought raged through the Brazilian Pantanal, a vital wetland known to store vast amounts of carbon. A turbocharged monsoon triggered landslides that killed hundreds of people in India's Kerala state. The Atlantic Ocean saw its earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, while deadly floods have wreaked havoc from Italy to Pakistan to Nigeria to China."

It was a summer of unrelenting humidity and heat too extreme for the human body to withstand. In June, at least 1,300 pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy city of Mecca died amid temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Another 125 people were reported dead in Mexico during a July streak of exceedingly hot nights that researchers say was made 200 times as likely because of climate change. And in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, one of the world's northernmost inhabited areas, August temperatures soared more than 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the previous record.

Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S, told the Post that "if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result."

"Unless we limit greenhouse gases," Buontempo added, "we will only see an exacerbation of these temperatures."

The original version of this article included inaccurate temperature conversions.