‘Stern warning’ as start to June hottest ever on record exceeding 1.5C global warming threshold

A “stern warning” has been issued by climate experts as the Earth has experienced its hottest ever start to June on record.

The first eleven days of the month have been 1.5C hotter than before industrial times which is an indicator that the world is quickly approaching that threshold, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

In the Paris climate agreement in 2015, governments and scientists agreed to try and limit global warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels to prevent the worst consequences of climate change including heat, drought and rising sea levels.

Dr Melissa Lazenby, lecturer in climate change at Sussex University told Sky News that the news should be a “stern warning sign that we are heading into very warm uncharted territory.”

Met Office director Prof Albert Klein Tank added that it “does not imply a breach of the Paris Agreement” but “the more times we temporarily exceed 1.5C the greater the chance of a permanent exceedance”.

It is not the first time the daily global average temperature has exceeded the threshold, as it was first exceeded in December 2015, and in the winters and springs of 2016 and 2020.

The warnings of possibly exceeding the temperature threshold continuously in the future comes as wildfires ravaged Canada causing orange smog to sweep across the East Coast.

Experts told NationalWorld that the UK will see “extreme” wildfires like Mediterranean lasting “into autumn” in future as temperatures rise.

Darren Evans, Professor of Ecology and Conservation at Newcastle University, said that climate models are predicting summers in the UK will “continue to become hotter, drier and more like those of southern Europe” which will mean that wildfires “may well increase in frequency here”.

Professor Evans added that the trend of increasing wildfires “recorded each year in the UK” is “linked to the changing climate and is likely to continue.”

In March, following the release of the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a climate expert warned that the “window is shrinking” to limit the impact of climate change.

Yamide Dagnet, director of Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations, told NationalWorld that “we need to take actions to keep 1.5C as every inch of degrees matters” as climate impacts are “happening now”.

The IPCC report, released in March, is a comprehensive review of the climate crisis and took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile. Scientists appealed directly to everyone on the planet to seize a dwindling chance to limit global warming to 1.5C or risk harming people living today and their descendants.