Even before the start of summer, heatwaves and massive fires have unleashed on the planet, but the worst is yet to come

Summer, the season of all perils, has yet to begin in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet a procession of extreme weather events is already striking relentlessly across the planet, from Canada to Siberia, across Asia and to the bottom of the oceans. The media broadcast pictures of the disasters, and meteorological agencies publish maps and curves that support the exceptional nature of these heat waves, fires or droughts. While France also experiences unusually high temperatures for the month of June, the same question arises: is the climate crisis accelerating?

Not a day goes by without an unprecedented phenomenon in many areas related to climate. Global average temperatures at the start of June were the hottest month on record for this period, it was announced Thursday, June 15. European Copernicus Service. Canada is engulfed in massive wildfires that are out of control, with more than 400 outbreaks spreading across the region from west to east. While fire season has yet to officially begin, smoke has already engulfed nearly 5 million hectares, double the annual average the country has recorded over the past decade. In Siberia, the bitter cold gave way to the oven. Mercury exceeded 40°C in the Russian region, during “The worst heat wave in its history”According to climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks the highest temperatures around the world. “Global climate history writes an amazing new page today”And He tweeted on June 3.

Southeast Asia is also stuffy, with a series of historic heat waves since mid-April: 45 ° C in Thailand, 44 ° C in India, Vietnam and Burma, 43 ° C in Laos … A few weeks ago, Shanghai also recorded the hottest day in May More than a century ago (with 36.7°C) and about fifty Chinese stations recorded levels that never reached in June, even 43°C. Elsewhere, Puerto Rico was hit by an exceptional heat wave, Spain experienced its warmest and second dry spring on record, Denmark suffers several weeks without rain, its first since 2006, and Antarctic sea ice. It is never lowered in May and June.

This rise in temperature hits the oceans hard, absorbing about 90% of the energy accumulated in the Earth system. Its surface experienced the hottest May on record. The North Atlantic is of particular concern to climate scientists, publishing anomalies of +1.1°C compared to the 1982-2023 average, an absolute record. “That’s huge for an entire basin, since seawater takes longer to warm up than the atmosphere.”Sabrina Speich, oceanographer at the Pierre-Simon-Laplace Institute and professor of earth sciences at Ecole Normale Supérieure. The situation is even worse in the western Mediterranean and in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, where the temperature rises from +3°C to +4°C. “Marine ecosystems cannot adapt to such sudden changesAnd World warns. Depending on the duration of the heat waves, we can expect very high fatalities like last year. »

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