The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced recently that July 2023 had been the highest global temperature recorded for that month since 1880. It was also the warmest month on record.
The Guardian reported the announcement came as a surprise as the weather was rainy across the pond in the UK.
The country received 19% less sunshine and 170% more rain compared with the 1991-2020 average, making the temperature there relatively cooler and wetter than in June, the first time such a phenomenon was observed since 1970.
A Warm July Brought About by El Niño
While the UK received wet weather, most of the world had a 0.24C warmer temperature than any of NASA's records, and 2.1C warmer than the 1951-80 climate average. Data collected for the latest study included observations of sea surface temperatures and surface air temperatures while factoring out those recorded in urban areas and spatial variations before calculating the results.
The observations were influenced by the El Niño phase of the eastern Pacific Ocean, which began developing in May. The warming of the sea surface contributed to global temperatures. However, an El Niño event contributes only a small amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures.
Other Factors
The developing El Niño was not the sole cause of the warm July the world experienced, as NASA records show the previous five hottest Julys occurred in the past five years. This included a rare triple-dip La Niña phase, in which sea surface temperatures cooled for three consecutive years, thus pointing to climate change as an important influence on the July temperatures.
Other factors contributing to the warm climate in July 2023 were the countless wildfires recorded across the world this year, as well as a heatwave that affected both the World Youth Day in Portugal and the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea.
