Baku, September 6, AZERTAC

Europe was hit by deadly heatwaves and extreme weather from as early as June, with certain populations more at risk than others, according to EuroNews.

"The climate crisis is tightening its grip on us" as summer 2024 is declared the hottest ever.

The news comes from European climate service Copernicus. Director Carlo Buontempo, like some other climate scientists, was undecided on whether 2024 would be the hottest year on record because August 2023 was so enormously hotter than average.

But then this August 2024 matched 2023, making Buontempo “pretty certain” that this year will end up hottest on record.

“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,” Buontempo said.

The northern meteorological summer - June, July and August - averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius, according to Copernicus. That's 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than the old record in 2023.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but American, British and Japanese records, which start in the mid-19th century, show the last decade has been the hottest since regular measurements were taken and likely in about 120,000 years, according to some scientists.

The Augusts of both 2024 and 2023 tied for the hottest Augusts globally at 16.82 degrees Celsius. July was the first time in more than a year that the world did not set a record, a tad behind 2023, but because June 2024 was so much hotter than June 2023, this summer as a whole was the hottest, Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said.

“What those sober numbers indicate is how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, who wasn't part of the research.