The world experienced its second-warmest May since records began this year, a month during which climate change significantly intensified a record-breaking heatwave in Greenland, scientists announced on Wednesday.
Last month marked Earth’s second-warmest May on record — surpassed only by May 2024 — completing the northern hemisphere’s second-hottest March-May spring on record, as detailed by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) in its monthly bulletin.
C3S reported that global surface temperatures last month averaged 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, a time when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale. This May broke a series of extraordinary heat, where 21 of the preceding 22 months had an average global temperature exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, scientists cautioned that this brief respite was unlikely to be sustained.
“Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5°C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,” said C3S director Carlo Buontempo. The primary driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels. Last year was confirmed as the planet’s hottest on record.
A separate study, released by the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists on Wednesday, determined that human-caused climate change made a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland last month approximately 3°C hotter than it would have otherwise been. This additional heat significantly contributed to a massive increase in the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.
“Even cold-climate countries are experiencing unprecedented temperatures,” commented Sarah Kew, study co-author and researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
The global threshold of 1.5°C represents the limit of warming that countries vowed to prevent under the Paris climate agreement, aiming to avert the most severe consequences of a warming planet. The world has not yet technically breached this target, which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5°C sustained over several decades. However, some scientists contend that it can no longer be realistically met and have urged governments to accelerate CO2 emissions reductions to limit the overshoot and the exacerbation of extreme weather events.
C3S’s records date back to 1940 and are cross-referenced with global temperature records extending back to 1850.
