July is set to be the world's hottest month in 'hundreds, if not thousands, of years,' top NASA...
This July may be the world's hottest month in 'hundreds, if not thousands, of years,' a top NASA scientist has warned. Climatologist Gavin Schmidst stressed that Earth is facing 'unprecedented changes' as numerous countries bake in record-breaking temperatures. His fears come in the midst of which is tipping Athens and California alike. 'We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world - the heat waves that we're seeing in the US in Europe and in China are demolishing records, left, right and centre,' Mr Schmidst said. 'But we anticipate that 2024 will be an even warmer year, because we're going to be starting off with that El Nino event that's building now, and that will peak towards the end of this year.' Mr Schmidt believes there is a '50-50 chance' that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, while other scientists claim this could be as high as 80 per cent. These forecasts are grounded in climate data hosted by the European Union and University of Maine which shows that July has faced record-breaking daily temperatures. The tools, which use a combination of ground and satellite data, also reveal that a surge in extreme heat is unmistakable. Mr Schmidt claims the effect of this cannot solely be attributed to the El Nino weather phenomenon, which 'has really only just emerged'. El Nino refers to a warming of the Pacific ocean's surface water which can have a huge influence on weather patterns across the world. The NASA scientist believes these findings will soon be reflected in more robust monthly reports issued later by US agencies. He continued: 'We've been seeing record-breaking sea surface temperatures, even outside of the tropics, for many months now. 'And we will anticipate that is going to continue, and the reason why we think that's going to continue, is because we continue to put greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.' While much of Europe is sweltering, the UK has not experienced similarly high temperatures so far this summer. Dr Melissa Lazenby, of the University of Sussex, previously said this was due to the current placement of a high-pressure system.