Summer 2023 Has Been Planet Earth's Hottest on Record by a Shockingly Wide Margin

By Yehudit Garmaise

Not only did the temperatures from June to August scorch the citizens of the world as the hottest summer ever recorded, but the sky-high temperatures spiked by a shockingly significant margin.

In August, the global average surface air temperature of 62.27 degrees F for August was a whopping 32.55 degrees F warmer than temperatures seen at the end of the 19th century, when trains, lightbulbs, and machinery just had started to gobble up fossil fuels in massive quantities.

While many people worldwide are trying to cool down from searing heatwaves, others are recovering from devastating wildfires that blazed in West Maui, Hawaii, Greece, and the island of Tenerife in Spain.

In addition to unprecedented heat, heavy rain came down to create relentless flash floods in the US from the Hudson Valley to Southern California. Globally, this summer, Norway saw devastating floods, while countries near the Atlantic Ocean suffered hurricanes, and people near the Pacific Ocean saw typhoons.

“Climate breakdown has begun,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who blamed the chief driver of the climate crisis on the excessive burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas. 

In addition to the climate havoc wrought and escalated by the world’s “addiction to fossil fuel,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) acknowledged that a naturally occurring climate pattern called El Niño, or “the little boy” in Spanish, also contributes to skyrocketing temperatures by warming the world’s oceans and seas in a cycle that runs every two to seven years.

The combined effects of climate change and El Niño could cause temperatures in 2024 to spike even higher, according to The UN’s World Meteorological Organization and European climate service Copernicus.