The 11th consecutive warmest month on record for Earth has just ended, providing scientists with a sneak peek at the scorching temperatures they predict for the summer.
The Earth saw an unrelenting run of record-breaking temperatures last month, with April measuring as the warmest on record, according to a monthly climate report released on Tuesday by Copernicus, Europe’s climate change service.
According to the research, the average surface air temperature in April 2024 was 15.03 degrees Celsius, or 59.05 degrees Fahrenheit. The research states that the April temperature was 1.21 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average for April from 1991 to 2020.
According to the analysis, the period from May 2023 to April 2024 was the warmest 12-month period ever recorded, with an average worldwide temperature 2.90 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the pre-industrial norm for the years 1850 to 1900.
The target set forth in the Paris Agreement is to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. According to the report, in April 2024, global sea surface temperatures remained abnormally high across most of the world’s oceans.
The bulk of the world’s seas had an average worldwide sea surface temperature of 21.04 degrees Celsius, or 69.87 degrees Fahrenheit, in April, which is the highest temperature ever recorded for the month of April.
The report is released as Americans get ready for an oppressively hot summer. According to the most recent seasonal outlook for the summer months from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which was published in April, above average temperatures are predicted for a large portion of the nation between June and August.
Parts of the South are already experiencing the first heat wave of the year, and for the majority of the week, scorching temperatures are predicted from Texas to Florida.
According to NOAA, the last year that Earth saw a colder-than-average year was 1976, or 48 years ago.
The persistent streak of new global temperature records can be attributed to both greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño events over the equatorial eastern Pacific. The sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific are returning to neutral levels after reaching their high before the beginning of the year due to El Niño.
Scientists predict that the warming effects will last for months even as El Niño conditions are diminishing.
A study published in Scientific Reports in February predicts that the El Niño pattern’s heating influence would cause record-breaking average surface air temperatures in several parts of the world during the summer.
Read Also:Â Tornadoes Strike Oklahoma, Kansas Braces for Hail: Severe Weather Alert!
This raises the likelihood that global land and ocean temperatures will rise beyond average and set new records in the near future.
While this long run of monthly global temperature records is exceptional, records also reveal that a similar run was recorded during the El Niño years of 2015 and 2016.
According to a statement from Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, typical climate changes are still being made worse by human-amplified global warming.
“Whilst temperature variations associated with natural cycles like El Niño come and go, the extra energy trapped into the ocean and the atmosphere by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses will keep pushing the global temperature towards new records,” Buontempo stated.
According to the most recent estimates, the current El Niño event will formally cease in the upcoming weeks, with neutral conditions taking over. La Niña is probably coming back this summer.
