August hottest month ever recorded globally as huge El Niño emerges

Europe's climate monitor reported on Thursday that August was the hottest month ever recorded globally, signaling a worsening climate crisis as a powerful El Nino pattern intensifies. Global temperatures in August soared to all-time highs, shattering the previous record set just a year prior. The Copernicus Climate Change Service calculated the average air temperature to be 16.96C, only marginally higher than the previous record by a single-tenth of a degree.

Both August and July 2023 are considered jointly the hottest on record, given the narrow margin between the two. Observations from Copernicus stretch back to 1940, but experts say today's climate surpasses historical context - humans have likely never seen temperatures as hot as the present for at least the last 100,000 years. Samantha Burgess, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, noted to AFP that "humans haven't seen temperatures as hot as today for, arguably, at least the last 100,000 years."

The UN's climate chief, Simon Stiell, echoed the warning, emphasizing the "evidence is irrefutable."