Rescuers carry away a man affected by the scorching heat as Muslim pilgrims perform the symbolic 'stoning of the devil' ritual as part of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, near Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca, on Sunday. El Niño dissipates, but temperatures still soar unexpectedlyDozens of bodies were discovered in Delhi during a two-day stretch this week when even sundown brought no relief from sweltering heat and humidity.
June is already all but sure to set a 13th-consecutive monthly global average temperature record, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who works for the payments company Stripe. Next month, he added, the planet could approach or surpass the highest global averages ever measured.Whether the unyielding trend of record heat will ease soon, with an expected transition from El Niño to its cooler counterpart, La Niña, isn’t yet clear, scientists said.
All week long, “exceptional” conditions could be found across much of Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and southeast Asia. Surging air conditioning demand crippled power grids in Albania and Kuwait. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the past week has seen more than 1,400 high temperature records fall around the globe.Since the start of the industrial era, human activities — mostly burning fossil fuels — have warmed the planet by about 1.2 degrees Celsius .
“The impacts of this event were amplified by the warm background conditions,” McPhaden said. “What had been an intense El Niño rainfall became an extreme El Niño rainfall.”