Good news — the era of global warming has officially ended, according to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres..The bad news? “The era of global boiling has arrived,” after the hottest July on record, even though four days remain in the month..“We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. . Hot JulyJuly was the hottest on record. .“Humanity is in the hot seat,” he told a press conference in New York on Thursday. “For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster. And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame.”.According to the World Meteorological Organization and the EU’s Copernicus Earth BSE ration programme, the last three weeks have been the hottest in history — or at least since 1940 when reliable records began..On July 6, the daily average global mean surface air temperature surpassed the record set in August 2016, making it the hottest day on record, with July 5 and July 7 not far behind. .The first three weeks of July have been the warmest three-week period on record, WMO said, with the global mean temperature temporarily exceeding the 1.5° Celsius threshold above preindustrial levels during the first and third week of the month (within observational error). .Each blamed the burning of fossil fuels for spurring violent weather and wildfires around the globe, including Canada and Greece..“The impact of these wildfires reaches well beyond ecological destruction and air pollution, leading to significant economic losses for businesses and the agricultural sector,” Copernicus said..Added WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas: “The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is more urgent than ever before. Climate action is not a luxury but a must.”.It comes after a new study from the University of Copenhagen on Wednesday that suggests the Atlantic clean current that pumps warm water into the Northern hemisphere in winter could break down as early as 2025 which would — ironically — trigger an Ice Age..The study authors nonetheless blamed warming of the oceans for the phenomenon, which ensures temperate atmospheric conditions in Northern European nations during colder months..If the current were to break down, the Thames and Rhine rivers would likely freeze over, the way they regularly did in the Middle Ages..The last time it happened was during the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ which lasted for several centuries and ended around 1850..There again, the good news is that the climate change gurus on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say a full Atlantic current collapse is unlikely this century based on climate modelling..“There is insufficient data to quantify the magnitude of the weakening, or to properly attribute it to anthropogenic forcing due to the limited length of the observational record,” it said in a 2021 study.
