Earth cooked to its hottest month on record in August, blowing far past a key climate threshold, due to the dangerous double whammy of human-caused climate change and a supersized El Nino, according to the European climate service Copernicus.
August's sizzle also helped push the globe and the United States to swelter through the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer scientists have measured.
"It is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer. This is occurring exactly as forecast by scientists literally decades ago," Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler said in an email. "The interesting question is not whether we will keep breaking heat records (we will), but whether we're going to do anything about it or just stand there while the climate train runs us over."
Globally, August was 1.65 degrees Celsius (nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, far exceeding the longer term 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The eight hottest months on record have all been from July 2023 on, according to Copernicus data.
Environmental Glance
Severe flash flooding in the Grand Canyon on Saturday caused significant damage to infrastructure, forced the evacuation of over 60 people and has left more than a dozen missing.
About 85 Americans remain missing after a devastating flood swept through a remote region of the Nepali Himalayas, the State Department said on Sunday.
A fire in California’s Big Sur region doubled in size overnight, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents, in a coastal region where firefighters have battled another blaze for weeks.
At least 359 people have died, and nearly 1,000 others are reported missing after a flash flood struck a mountainous area in Nepal and the Tibet region of China on Aug. 26.





























