SETH W. JAMES

Here we go again: the hottest summer on record, 2024

September 14, 2024

By Seth W. James

If it seems like I’ve written this blog before, it’s because I have.  The sad part is that, in all likelihood, I’ll be writing it again next year, too.  As The LA Times reported, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, “summer 2024 was Earth’s hottest on record,” with the June, July and August period clocking in at a record-breaking 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit global average.  That wasn’t the only record broken, however, with the hottest day ever recorded having been set (July 22^nd, to be broken next year, no doubt), June and August had their hottest records broken, and with Hurricane Beryl forming in June, the earliest Category 5 record was also set.

More worrying to Earth’s continued ability to sustain human life was the fact that global mean temperatures had exceeded the 1.5C increase limit that climate scientists have long warned us about—a point at which the effects of climate change may begin to rage out of control: the limit has been surpassed nearly every month for more than a year.  As the LA Times noted, “August 2024 was the 13th month in a 14-month period to exceed that benchmark, with the global average temperature measuring roughly 2.72 degrees — or 1.51 degrees Celsius — above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus. The streak was broken only by the month of July, which came in just shy of the limit for the first time in a year.”

Now, it is only September, so you may be thinking or hoping that a cool spell will have us come in just under setting a new, hottest-year-ever record.  That is unlikely.  As The Guardian reported, “In order for 2024 not to become the warmest on record, we need to see very significant landscape cooling for the remaining few months, which doesn’t look likely at this stage,” Carlo Buontempo, [Copernicus director,] said.”

With Phoenix setting a record for 114 days with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with Mexico, Egypt, and Laos breaking their all-time record temperatures (in addition to many other countries), and with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning that sea levels will “soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale with no lifeboat to take us back to safety,” the predictions about climate change’s worst effects are already upon us.  Worse is yet to come, but what we are now facing should be enough to convince any rational person that the time for radical action is now.  We should demand of all politicians, everywhere, that the use of fossil fuels be brought to an immediate, permanent halt.  Nothing short of that will save humanity.