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EU Monitor: 2024 'Increasingly Likely' to be Warmest on Record

People cool off on the "Miroir d'Eau" water feature (Reflecting Water) in Bordeaux, south-western France on July 28, 2024, as a heatwave spreads across southern areas of the country. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)
People cool off on the "Miroir d'Eau" water feature (Reflecting Water) in Bordeaux, south-western France on July 28, 2024, as a heatwave spreads across southern areas of the country. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)
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EU Monitor: 2024 'Increasingly Likely' to be Warmest on Record

People cool off on the "Miroir d'Eau" water feature (Reflecting Water) in Bordeaux, south-western France on July 28, 2024, as a heatwave spreads across southern areas of the country. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)
People cool off on the "Miroir d'Eau" water feature (Reflecting Water) in Bordeaux, south-western France on July 28, 2024, as a heatwave spreads across southern areas of the country. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)

It is "increasingly likely" 2024 will be the hottest year on record, despite July ending a 13-month streak of monthly temperature records, the EU's climate monitor said Thursday.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last month was the second warmest on record books going back to 1940, only slightly cooler than July 2023.

Between June 2023 and June 2024, each month eclipsed its own temperature record for the time of year.

"The streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker," said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

Last month the global average temperature was 16.91 degrees Celsius, only 0.04C below July 2023, according to C3S's monthly bulletin.

But "the overall context hasn't changed, our climate continues to warm," said Burgess.

"The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero," she said.

From January to July global temperatures were 0.70C above the 1991-2020 average.

This anomaly would need to drop significantly over the rest of this year for 2024 not to be hotter than 2023 -- "making it increasingly likely that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record", said C3S.

- 'Too hot to handle' -

July 2024 was 1.48C warmer than the estimated average temperatures for the month during the period 1850-1900, before the world started to rapidly burn fossil fuels.

This has translated into punishing heat for hundreds of millions of people.

The Earth experienced its two hottest days on record with global average temperatures at a virtual tie on July 22 and 23 reaching 17.6C, AFP quoted C3S as saying.

The Mediterranean was gripped by a heatwave scientists said would have been "virtually impossible" without global warming as China and Japan sweated through their hottest July on record.

Record-breaking rainfall pummeled Pakistan, wildfires ravaged western US states and Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction as it swept from the Caribbean to the southeast of the United States.

Temperatures for the oceans, which absorb 90 percent of the excess heat caused by human activities, were also the second warmest on record for the month of July.

Average sea surface temperatures were 20.88C last month, only 0.01C below July 2023.

This marked the end of a 15-month period of tumbling heat records for the oceans.

However, scientists at C3S noted that "air temperatures over the ocean remained unusually high over many regions" despite a swing from the El Nino weather pattern that helped fuel a spike in global temperatures to its opposite La Nina, which has a cooling effect.

On Wednesday, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo reflected on a year of "widespread, intense and extended heatwaves.”

"This is becoming too hot to handle," she said.

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Varieties

Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
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Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)

Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They're thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don't yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada's Lakehead University.

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.