Latest summer heat record, a taste of things to come warns top UN meteorologist

Average global temperatures reached record levels on land and sea last month, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday.The WMO announcement follows a report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service declaring record global temperatures that extended into the first week of July, breaking the previous record set in August 2016.There’s little doubt among UN scientists that higher-than-normal temperatures will come at a cost, with negative impacts expected in fishing grounds and knock-on climate emergencies, such as hurricanes, tropical cyclones, heavy rains and drought. For more insight on the global temperature spike and a look ahead to weather trends for the rest of the year, UN News’s Nancy Sarkis spoke to Dr. Omar Baddour, who’s Chief of Climate Monitoring at WMO in Geneva.