July 2023 set to be hottest month on record

(27 Jul 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4446485

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Death Valley National Park, California - 16 July 2023
1. Caution, Extreme Heat Danger sign
2. Wide people on platform over desert floor
3. Same, “STOP Extreme Heat Danger” sign
HEADLINE: July 2023 set to be hottest month on record
ANNOTATION: July has been such a scorcher so far that scientists say it will be the hottest globally on record.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tokyo, Japan - 18 July 2023
4. Cooling mist sprays in central Tokyo
5. People walking, with cooling mist sprays overhead
ANNOTATION: The World Meteorological Organization and the EU’s climate change service predict July may also be the warmest month human civilization has ever seen.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
++VIDEO CALL++
Bonn, Germany – 26 July 2023
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Carlo Buontempo, Director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service:
“I think unless an ice age were to appear all of a sudden out of nothing, it is basically virtually certain we will break the record for the warmest July on record and the warmest month on record.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Istanbul, Turkey - 26 July 2023
7. Various people swimming in the Bosporus
ANNOTATION: Off-the-charts heat waves have blistered across three continents this month: North America, Europe and Asia.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Athens, Greece - 26 July 2023
8. Various of Greek Red Cross volunteers providing water to tourists outside of Acropolis
ANNOTATION: The Earth’s temperature has also been temporarily breaching a key threshold: the internationally accepted goal of limiting g

ASSOCIATED PRESS
++VIDEO CALL++
Bonn, Germany – 26 July 2023
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service:
“it is true that at the moment the situation is quite extraordinary … in terms of land air, the air temperature of the land. And the prediction seems to indicate this will continue. So it is possible that 2023 in its own right will be record breaking.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rome, Italy - 18 July 2023
10. Temperature on pharmacy sign reading 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit)
11. Crowd around water machine distributor near Colosseum
12. Person filling up bottle with water
ANNOTATION: Scientists say the records are due to human-caused climate change that is amplified by a natural El Nino climate pattern.


STORYLINE:

July has been so hot so far that scientists calculate that this month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left to sweat through.

The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July’s heat is beyond record-smashing.

They said Earth’s temperature has been temporarily passing over a key warming threshold: the internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Temperatures were 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times for 16 days this month, but the Paris climate accord aims to keep the 20-or-30-year global temperature average to 1.5 degrees.

A few days of temporarily beating that threshold have happened before, but never in July.

July has been so off-the-charts hot with heat waves blistering three continents – North America, Europe and Asia – that researchers said a record was inevitable.


Buontempo and other scientists said the records are from human-caused climate change augmented by a natural El Nino warming of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide.