Average temperatures from June to August were the highest since at least 1991, according to scientists.
(Bloomberg) — Europe’s summer of heat waves and drought was the hottest in at least three decades by substantial margins, according to Earth observation agency Copernicus.
Average temperatures from June to August were 0.4°C above the previous hottest summer in 2021, while temperatures last month were 0.8°C above the previous hottest August, in 2018. Globally, this August was the joint third warmest on the agency’s data set, which goes back to 1991.
“We’ve not only had record August temperatures for Europe,” Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “But also for the summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old.”
Climate change has led to an increase of about 1.1°C in global temperatures since pre-industrial times. Global warming is exacerbating extreme events such as heat waves and drought, both of which have hit Europe hard this summer. Temperature records have been broken in several places in western Europe, while Spain and France have seen the worst fires in decades.
This was also the joint hottest summer on record for the UK — together with 2018 — since at least 1884, according to provisional statistics by the country’s Met Office.
North America also had one of its warmest summers on record.
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