Record Broken Again on the 7th Following the 3rd and 4th
Experts Cite Warming and El Ni?o Effects
On the 4th, the record for the 'hottest day ever recorded in climate observation' was broken after just one day, and on the 7th, a new record was set again. The heatwave record was renewed three times within a week.
According to the announcement by the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the global average temperature on the 7th was recorded at 17.23 degrees Celsius. This surpasses the previous highest records of 17.01 degrees on the 3rd and 17.18 degrees on the 4th.
'Heatwave advisory will be in effect in the Seoul area starting from 11 a.m.' An emergency alert message arrived on the cellphone with a loud notification sound. This is not the typical midsummer situation of late July to early August. It is a heatwave advisory issued in mid-June. Due to global warming, the entire world is suffering from abnormal weather patterns. The four distinct seasons in South Korea are now a thing of the past. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@
The United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) had warned in a report released last May that the global highest temperature record could soon be broken. It is analyzed to be due to the long-term global warming trend caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, combined with the ‘El Ni?o phenomenon’ occurring for the first time in four years.
So far, the hottest year on record was 2016. However, the WMO predicted that “there is a 98% chance this record will be broken within five years.” This forecast was made without certainty whether El Ni?o would occur this year, but with the actual occurrence of El Ni?o, the abnormal high temperature phenomenon seems to have arrived rapidly.
El Ni?o refers to the phenomenon where the sea surface temperature in the monitoring area of the eastern equatorial Pacific rises by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius and persists for more than five months. According to the WMO, as of the 6th, the sea surface temperature in the eastern Pacific has risen by about 3 to 4 degrees Celsius compared to normal years.
The opposite phenomenon of El Ni?o is La Ni?a, where the sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific abnormally decreases. La Ni?a has a partial effect of suppressing global temperature rise, while El Ni?o accelerates warming.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union’s climate change monitoring agency, evaluated that the world experienced the hottest June on record last month. As this heatwave continues into July, experts predict that unprecedented levels of heat will occur more frequently in the future.
Recently, some regions in China have experienced heat exceeding 35 degrees Celsius, and the southern United States has also seen sustained hot weather over the past few weeks.
On the 7th (local time), a man in his 60s driving a car with a broken air conditioner was found dead in 52-degree heat at Death Valley National Park in California, USA. In Mexico, more than 100 people have died due to extreme heat.
Some parts of North Africa have seen temperatures exceed 50 degrees Celsius, and abnormal high temperature phenomena are even being observed on the Antarctic continent.
Professor Gabriel Vecchi of Princeton University in the United States said about this heatwave, “It is a short-term temperature rise caused by the abnormal combination of several warming factors,” but warned, “Humanity has increased greenhouse gases over the past 150 years, which will greatly increase the likelihood of pushing us into unknown territory beyond the records.”
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