Heat, fires, rain: the climatic extremes of the boreal summer

In the last three months, the planet was the scene of a series of extreme weather events such as heat waves, fires and floods that became more frequent and intense due to the global warming.

On a global scale, July and August 2023 were the hottest months ever recorded, according to the European Copernicus Observatory (EMS), for whom the current year has a great chance of being the warmest in history.

Heat waves in the northern hemisphere

The northern summer of 2023 was marked by temperature records. India experienced its hottest and driest August since records began more than a century ago. Japan faced the warmest average temperatures ever recorded in the archipelago between June and August.

The heat wave also affected the Mediterranean area and North America, with temperatures exceeding 40 ºC.

Winter heat in the south

In the antipodes, the southern winter was exceptionally mild. The Australian winter was the warmest ever recorded, with an average temperature of 16.75ºC between June and August.

Latin America experienced winter heat waves. The thermometer exceeded 30 ºC in Sao Paulo (Brazil), and reached 25 ºC in Santiago, Chile, very unusual temperatures for the season. In Argentina, the inhabitants of Buenos Aires experienced the hottest August 1st since statistics began (30ºC).

According to scientists, these high temperatures are the result of climate change, accentuated this year by the recent reappearance of the El Niño phenomenon, which is characterized by an increase in the temperature of Pacific waters and causes extreme weather phenomena.

Boiling oceans

In August, the oceans broke a record. According to the Copernicus ERA5 database, the surface temperature reached 21ºC after months of historic overheating, still ongoing. The North Atlantic and the Mediterranean also reached records.

This warming has dire consequences for biodiversity, while reducing the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2, reinforcing the vicious cycle of climate warming.

While not an average, the water temperature was measured at 38.3°C on July 24 off the coast of Florida, USA, setting a potential world record if the accuracy of the measurement is confirmed. .

Hawaii, Canada and Greece in flames

The American archipelago of Hawaii was mourned in August by the deadliest fires in the United States in a century, which claimed at least 115 lives and left hundreds missing on the island of Maui.

In Canada, the fires caused no casualties, but were exceptionally devastating in a context of severe drought. Since the beginning of the year, according to the Canadian Interservice Forest Fire Center (CIFFC), 16.44 million hectares have burned, equivalent to the area of ​​Tunisia.

The previous record was 7.11 million hectares in 1995. At the end of June, Montreal was briefly the most polluted city in the world, trapped under a layer of smoke due to forest fires, according to the specialized company Iqair.

To a lesser extent, Europe was also affected by the flames, such as in Greece, where a fire near the Turkish border destroyed more than 80,000 hectares. Other outbreaks hit the islands of Corfu and Rhodes during the summer.

Since the beginning of the year, 535,000 hectares have burned in Europe, according to Copernicus (as of September 2). Although this figure is above the average (447,000 ha), it is still much lower than the record of 1.21 million reached in the same period in 2017.

Deadly floods in Asia

The monsoon season killed at least 175 people in Pakistan, 155 in India and 41 in South Korea, while in northern China at least 62 people died due to torrential rains.

But despite the human balance, rainfall was not exceptional in India, since in August it was at its lowest level ever recorded, which contributed to the record temperatures in the country.

Source: AFP