Brussels: agencies

While vast areas of three continents are burning under scorching temperatures, and ocean temperatures are rising to unprecedented levels, scientists from two global climate change bodies say that this July will be the hottest month in the history of the planet by a large margin.
July's temperatures were so extreme that it is "almost certain" that this month will break records "by a huge margin", according to a report published by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization.
And it looks like we've just experienced the hottest three-week period on record, almost certainly in hundreds of thousands of years.
These are often broken records that track the average air temperature around the world.
But the average temperature during the first 23 days of July was 16.95 degrees Celsius, which surpasses the previous record of 16.63 degrees Celsius set in July 2019, according to the report.
According to “CNN,” the data used to track these records date back to 1940, but many scientists say that these temperatures are almost certainly the hottest the planet has seen in 120,000 years, based on what we know from climate data extracted from Tree rings, coral reefs and deep sea sediment cores.
"These are the highest temperatures in human history," said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Service.
All of this adds up to a scorching summer in the northern hemisphere, and it may be unprecedented.
“The odds are certainly in favor of a record-breaking summer,” said Carlo Bontempo, director of the Copernicus Service, though he cautioned that it was too early to say this with confidence.
With temperatures soaring over 50 degrees Celsius in parts of the United States, heat-related deaths have skyrocketed, with people suffering life-threatening burns from falling onto the hot ground.
More than 40 people have died in the Mediterranean as wildfires raged across the region, fueled by extreme temperatures. In Asia, severe and persistent heat waves claim lives and threaten food security.
Burgess pointed out that climate change caused by human activity is the main driver of this exceptional heat.
A recent study found that climate change played a "very major" role in heat waves in the United States, China and southern Europe this summer. According to what was reported by the Cairo-based Seventh Day website
Burgess added that the El Niño phenomenon, which is a natural climate fluctuation due to the effect of warming, did not have a significant impact on temperatures because it is still in its developmental stage, but it will play a much larger role next year and is likely to lead to higher temperatures.