00:00Western Europe has had its hottest summer on record, fueling droughts and wildfires on the world's fastest warming continent.
00:07Temperatures in June and July were 2.79 degrees Celsius above average.
00:12That passes the previous record set back in 2022.
00:17Europe's seas were hotter last month than in any previous July since the records began.
00:22Conditions in the Atlantic and Mediterranean were made worse by the Super El Nino developing in the Pacific.
00:28And the extreme heat has affected Europe's waterways.
00:31Like the Danube, river flows were much lower than average, disrupting transport and even energy production.
00:37Hungary almost closed its only nuclear power station for the first time in its 44-year history because of the
00:44water shortage.
00:46Well, this report is from the EU's climate service, Copernicus.
00:50Julian Nicholas is one of the climate scientists.
00:54Julian, welcome. I mean, it's such a sobering report to read.
00:58It's difficult to know where to start, really.
01:00But if you had to pick one finding that matters most, what would it be?
01:06Thank you for having me.
01:09Indeed, those numbers, in fact, are quite striking, not just for what's happening in Europe, but what's happening at the
01:17global scale.
01:18And one fact that we report in our latest climate bulletin is what's happening to the global ocean surface temperature,
01:28which reached its highest values.
01:31So globally for the month of July, and it surpassed the already exceptional levels that were reached only a couple
01:40of years ago in 2023 and 2024.
01:43At the time, these were really exceptional, and we are above those levels.
01:48So, again, it shows that we are, again, entering in a very exceptional global context of very high ocean surface
01:59temperatures.
02:00And we've obviously been reporting on the storms around the world, obviously in China and the wildfires in Europe.
02:07Why should people pay so much attention to what's happening in the oceans?
02:15There are many implications of the warming of the ocean that we are observing.
02:20For once, it has a lot of impacts on marine ecosystem, putting extra stress on those ecosystems.
02:30And a large fraction of the world's populations depends on the ocean for their subsistence.
02:36But as we are seeing with the more powerful tropical cyclone and typhoon, including typhoon dolphins at the moment, warmer
02:46ocean can fuel more extreme weather events, including tropical cyclone and typhoons, but also more intense rainfall.
02:56And finally, warmer ocean also contributes to sea level rise, to the melting of ice sheets and sea ice.
03:03So, there's really widespread implications that just go beyond the increase in temperature.
03:12Is this likely to continue into the month ahead, or is this just a freak summer, a freak few months?
03:21Well, at the scale of Europe, I think it's still, so the month of August is already likely to be
03:30a very warm and perhaps record month.
03:34At the global scale, we are expecting the alineal conditions that are currently developing in the equatorial Pacific to further
03:44intensify,
03:46contributing to the further increase in the ocean surface temperature, both globally and of the global temperature.
03:57So, further warming ahead, at least at the global scale, at the regional, for each region, it really depends.
04:06But this is like a global warming context that is likely to continue in the coming month.
04:13Julian, thanks very much for your time. Good to see you.
04:15That's Julian Nicholas from Comperticus, one of their climate scientists, the EU's climate service.
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