NASA's top climatologist Gavin Schmidt said on Thursday that July 2023 will likely be the world's hottest month in "hundreds, if not thousands, of years".
Washington: NASA’s top climatologist Gavin Schmidt said on Thursday that July 2023 will likely be the world’s hottest month in “hundreds, if not thousands, of years”.
Daily records have already been broken this month according to tools run by the European Union and the University of Maine, which combine ground and satellite data into models to generate preliminary estimates.
“Although they are slightly different from each other, there is a clear trend towards extreme heat in both. This will probably be reflected in the more robust monthly reports issued by the US agencies later,” Schmidt told a NASA briefing with reporters.
“We’re seeing unprecedented changes all over the world. The heat waves we’re seeing in the US, Europe and China are all smashing records,” he said. These effects cannot be attributed solely to the El Niño weather pattern, which “really just emerged.”
He added that El Niño may be playing a small role, adding, “What we’re seeing is warming everywhere, almost everywhere, especially in the oceans. We’ve been seeing record-breaking sea surface temperatures for several months now, even outside the tropics.”
“And we would anticipate that it will continue, and we think it will continue, because we are not going to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” he said.
