World’s oceans also boiling, as Europe burns in heatwaves and wildfires

The world’s seas and oceans recorded their hottest ever July according to a study released on Monday (10 August), as air temperature also broke records in Europe. Extra-polar sea surface temperatures reached all-time July highs this year at 20.96 °C according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service, overtaking the previous July record from 2023 of 20.89 °C. The Atlantic coast and western Mediterranean were most affected, as well as the tropical Pacific, due to El Niño, the warm phase of a natural climate cycle that raises temperatures temporarily in the area. The new research found the average air temperature in western Europe to beat the previous record for June-July set in 2022. Western Europe bore the biggest brunt of rising temperatures, with the gravest heat levels in France, Spain, England, and Ireland, hitting 2.79 °C above average. However, lower than average temperatures across eastern Europe and Scandinavia brought down the average sea surface air temperature for July to 16.90 °C, which was still 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 average. The ocean absorbs up to 90 percent of the excess heat on our planet, redistributing it to deeper layers from the upper 700 metres of the sea, where most of the heat gain is happening. Meanwhile, the hot and dry conditions are “extending the fire season northwards,” since the persistent increase of wildfires have been “[producing] more smoke and inject it higher into the atmosphere, meaning it can travel further and impact air quality not only locally,” said Laurence Rouil, director of the Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service. The incessant waves of heat have brought excess deaths to Europe this summer, with 11,900 estimated deaths in Germany alone, according to Berlin’s federal Robert Koch research institute.