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Tie for Warmest 12-Month Period Globally as Siberia Sizzles

Agence France-Presse

   Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average across much of
   permafrost-laden Siberia last month, which was tied for the warmest
   June on record globally, the European Union's climate monitoring
   network said Tuesday.

   The 12-month period to June 2020 was also tied for the warmest to date
   across the planet, on a par with the ones ending in May 2020 and
   September 2016, an exceptional El Nino year, the Copernicus Climate
   Change Service (C3S) reported.

   That means Earth's average surface temperature for July 2019-June 2020
   was 1.3C above pre-industrial levels, the standard benchmark for global
   warming.

   The 2015 Paris climate treaty calls for capping the rise in temperature
   to "well below" 2C.

   In 2018, however, the UN's climate science panel (IPCC) concluded in a
   landmark report that 1.5C -- only two-tenths of a degree above the new
   12-month high -- is a far safer guardrail.

   In the Arctic, meanwhile, an hourly temperature record for June -- 37
   degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) -- was set on the 21st near
   Verkhoyansk in northeastern Russia, where a weather station logged a
   blistering 38C on the same day.

   The previously registered Arctic hourly highs in 1969 and 1973 were at
   least a full degree Celsius cooler.

   'Zombie' fires

   Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January,
   combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of
   wildfires that devastated the region last summer, C3S reported.

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