The three-month period between June and August was the warmest ever on record, during which temperatures everywhere across the world — not just the global average — reached levels that were made at least two times more likely by climate change, a new first-of-its-kind study has found. The study carried out by Climate Central, a non-profit climate science and news organisation, said nearly 7.95 billion people, about 98 per cent of global population, living in more than 200 countries, or territories, experienced at least a single day of unprecedented temperature during this period. In India, the average temperature during this three-month period was 0.6 degree Celsius higher than normal, the study said. The study comes just a day after the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), citing data from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Programme, said this past August happened to be the second hottest month ever, following on July which was the hottest ever. The WMO also said that the year 2023 so far, January to August, had been the second hottest on record, just behind 2016. “Virtually no one on Earth escaped the influence of global warming during the past three months,” Dr. Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice president for science, said. “In every country we could analyse, including the southern hemisphere where this is the coolest time of year, we saw temperatures that would be difficult, and in some cases nearly impossible, without human-caused climate change. Carbon pollution is clearly responsible for this season’s record-setting heat,” he said in a statement. The study also noted that the fingerprints of climate change on abnormally high temperatures were more explicitly visible in the smaller, and less developed, countries. Almost every month this year has broken one or the other warming record. June, for example, was the warmest ever, while March was the second-warmest ever, May was the third-warmest ever, and February and April the fourth warmest ever. July was not just the warmest July ever, but the warmest month ever. Several days in July happened to be the hottest days ever recorded. So far, 2016 is the warmest year on record, with global average annual temperature that was 1.28 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times (the average of 1850-1900).
