According to these centers (NCEI), the average surface temperature exceeded the 20th-century average of 15.5 ºC by 1.22 degrees Celsius (ºC).

The extreme heat particularly affected much of Africa and South America, where previous records were surpassed by 0.51 and 0.82 ºC respectively.

One of the biggest effects of the heat in South America was “the premature and expansive drought in the Pantanal”, the largest tropical wetland in the world, where in June there were more than 2,500 forest fires, the highest number since these occurrences have been recorded.

Meanwhile, in Europe, this was the hottest month in its history, exceeding the monthly average by 2.55 ºC, according to the NCEI, members of the US Agency for the Oceans and Atmosphere (NOAA, its acronym in English), which began carrying out these studies 175 years ago.

"June was also very hot for the oceans, whose average temperature was 0.98 ºC above the average after the climatic phenomenon O Menino [El Niño]. In this sense, the waters of the equatorial Atlantic and the Caribbean, an area that has just suffered from Hurricane Beryl.”


Drier

Regarding precipitation, June was drier than average in most of the western and far eastern USA and Alaska, as well as in the area that stretches from northern Africa to southeastern Europe and much of the Russian Federation, northwestern China, and areas of southern and eastern Australia.

This year, NOAA assigns a 60% probability that 2024 will be the hottest ever, and it is indisputable in its anticipation that it will be among the five hottest ever.

On Monday, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the climate monitoring component of the European space program, indicated that June had been the 13th hottest ever worldwide since records exist.

The average surface air temperature, according to Copernicus, was 16.66 ºC, 0.67 ºC more than the 1991-2020 average for that month and 0.14 ºC above the previous maximum, established in June 2023.