Deutsche Welle

This year`s July was recorded as the third hottest worldwide since records began, climate experts said on Thursday.

The average worldwide surface air temperature reached 16.68 degrees Celsius (62.02 degrees Fahrenheit) in July, which is 0.45 degrees C above the 1991-2020 average for the month.

In July this year, temperatures surpassed 50 degrees C in the Gulf, Iraq and, for the first time, Turkey, while torrential rains killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan.

The streak of record-breaking temperatures paused in July.

"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over," Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU`s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.

"But that does not mean climate change has stopped," he said. "We continue to witness the effects of a warming world."

Though not as high as recorded in July 2023 and the second-warmest July 2024, the temperature was still 1.25 degrees C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period.

 "We continued to witness the effect of a warming world in events such as extreme heatwaves and catastrophic floods in July," Buontempo said.

The main reason behind rising temperatures is attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.

"Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of impacts," Buontempo said.