This year's June was the hottest ever recorded in western Europe and the second-warmest globally at 1.39°C above the estimated pre-industrial average, according to the European Union's climate change services.
Record-breaking land temperatures coincided with the warmest June sea surface temperatures ever observed, stressing the continued accumulation of heat within the Earth's climate system, data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) published on Thursday reveal.