２１年７月、史上最も暑い月に　米機関発表

【ワシントンＡＦＰ＝時事】米海洋大気局（ＮＯＡＡ）は１３日、今年７月が１４２年前の観測開始以降で最も暑い月となったと発表した。気候変動がもたらしている危機を改めて示すデータだ。（写真は資料写真）
　ＮＯＡＡ国立環境情報センター（ＮＣＥＩ）のデータによると、地球の地表と海面を合わせた表面温度は先月、２０世紀平均の１５．８度を０．９３度上回り、２０１６年７月と１９年、２０年に観測されていた最高記録を０．０１度更新した。
　ＮＯＡＡのリック・スピンラッド局長は「今回の新記録は、気候変動が地球にもたらした不穏で破滅的な行く末に追い打ちをかけるものだ」と指摘した。
　欧州連合（ＥＵ）のコペルニクス気候変動サービス（Ｃ３Ｓ）のデータでは、先月は史上３番目に暑い７月となったとされていた。各機関のデータに若干の差が生じることは珍しくない。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/08/16-13:50）

July was the hottest month globally ever recorded, a US scientific agency said Friday, in the latest data to sound the alarm about the climate crisis.
July is typically the world's warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded, said Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe, Spinrad said in a statement citing data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
NOAA said combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest July since record-keeping began 142 years ago.
The month was 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was equaled in 2019 and 2020.
However according to data released by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, last month was the third warmest July on record globally.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, said it is not unusual for agencies to have small differences in data.
The NOAA record has more limited coverage over the Arctic than other global temperature records, which tend to show July 2021 as the second (NASA) or third (Copernicus) warmest on record, Hausfather told AFP.
But regardless of exactly where it ends up on the leaderboards, the warmth the world is experiencing this summer is a clear impact of climate change due to human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, he said.
The extreme events we are seeing worldwide -? from record-shattering heat waves to extreme rainfall to raging wildfires ?- are all long-predicted and well understood impacts of a warmer world, he said.
They will continue to get more severe until the world cuts its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases down to net-zero.
- 'Sobering' IPCC report -
Last week, a UN climate science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provoked shock by saying the world is on course to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming around 2030.
Scientists from across the globe delivered the most up-to-date assessment of the ways in which the climate is changing, NOAA's Spinrad said.
It is a sobering IPCC report that finds that human influence is, unequivocally, causing climate change, and it confirms the impacts are widespread and rapidly intensifying.
With only 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming so far, an unbroken cascade of deadly weather disasters bulked up by climate change has swept the world this summer, from asphalt-melting heatwaves in Canada, to rainstorms turning city streets in China and Germany into rivers, to untamable wildfires sweeping Greece and California.
NOAA said the land-surface only temperature for the Northern Hemisphere was the highest ever recorded for July -- 2.77 degrees Fahrenheit (1.54 degrees Celsius) above average, surpassing the previous record in 2012.
Asia had its hottest July ever, surpassing 2010, it said, while Europe had its second-hottest July, trailing only 2018.