EU climate service: July 2024 ends 13-month streak of hottest months on record
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A child cools off in the fountain at Washington Square Park in New York City on June 19, 2024. Copernicus said July just missed setting a record for hot months. (Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo)
Aug. 8 (UPI) -- By a narrow margin, July's temperatures did not set a record for the hottest July on record, breaking a string of 13 straight months of all-time standards being set for warming, according to the European Union's observation unit Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday.
The average air temperature for July was 62.44 degrees Fahrenheit just below the record-setting July 2023, with an average temperature of 62.51 degrees Fahrenheit.
Copernicus experts said, though, the difference is so small it does not change the concerns over present and future global warming.
"The streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. "The overall context hasn't changed. Our climate continues to warm.
"The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero."
The service said despite the small dip in July's temperature, the year-to-date global temperature, January to July, remains higher than it was last year and would have to drop at least 0.23 degrees Celsius not to beat 2023 figures.
Average temperatures in Europe in July were 1.49 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average July temperatures. The service said the United States, western Canada, most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and eastern Antarctica all experienced above average temperature in July.
Copernicus said parts of the United States, South America and Australia, however, experienced below-average temperatures.
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