Wildfires, droughts and heat waves: A look at the hottest summer on record

According to recent data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the 2023 summer season was the warmest summer on record.

As Canadians grapple with the most severe wildfire season in the country ever, exacerbated by unprecedented heat waves worldwide, recent findings from the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service reveal that June, July and August were the warmest months on record globally by a large margin.

According to the data, the global average temperature for this summer reached 16.77 degrees Celsius, surpassing the average summer temperature between 1991 and 2020 by 0.66 C. This increase exceeds the previous record, established in August 2019, by nearly 0.3 C.

July 2023 was the warmest month ever recorded on a global scale, according to Copernicus, with a global average temperature of 16.95 C, 0.33 C higher than the previous record set in 2019.

And the second hottest month on record is now August 2023, which saw a global-mean surface air temperature of 16.82 C, making it 0.71 C warmer than the August average for the period from 1991 to 2020. This temperature also surpassed the previous record, set in August 2016, by 0.31 C.

Data highlights that the conditions throughout the year were far from ideal as the global temperature anomaly for the first eight months of 2023 — January to August — stands as the second warmest on record. It lags behind 2016, which holds the title for the warmest year on record, by a mere 0.01 C.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a stark warning Wednesday in response to the alarming statistics.

“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” Guterres said.