Hot, hot and hotter still

It’s that time of year again. I didn’t plan it this way, but each year as I write September’s column, the news seems to be full of heatwaves, drought, floods and fires.

Here are four global climate records that have been broken this summer which should concern us.

1. 6 July was the hottest day on record globally, ever. That’s a daily average air temperature of breaking the 17.08°C, 2016 record. If that doesn’t sound very hot, remember it’s an average temperature, measured across the whole world, and it’s the first time it’s passed 17°C.

2. June was the hottest on record. Compared with the pre-industrial average (normally taken as 1850–1900, for which we have reliable temperature records), June 2023 was 1.47°C hotter than a typical June in the earlier period.

3. There’s been an extreme marine heatwave, especially in the North Atlantic. This is what I was originally going to write this column about, before I became aware of all the other tumbling records. It’s particularly concerning, because the record wasn’t just passed, but smashed, with the Atlantic 5°C warmer than it should be. The oceans play a key role in absorbing heat from the atmosphere, but it seems like they can’t take much more.

4. Antarctic sea ice is at a record low, by some way. An area about ten times the size of the UK is missing, compared with the 1981–2010 average.

With thanks to BBC News for summarising this information from various scientific sources and providing some handy charts to visualise them which you can see here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66229065.

Now I am fully aware that weather is not the same as climate, and just because the temperature in say, Rome, broke the record recently with its highest-ever temperature of a scorching 42.9°C, it doesn’t necessarily mean the whole world’s warming. There’s also El Niño, a natural cycle of warm currents in the Pacific, which heats the atmosphere and is returning this year. It is bound to push global temperatures up, although scientists were not expecting any effects to kick in so soon.

And yet, everything seems to be pointing in one direction. In a world that’s gradually getting hotter – and the evidence for this is now indisputable – you can expect summer temperature records to be broken regularly. The world is heating at an alarming rate and climate scientists are now publicly saying that the world is not on track to meet the goal agreed in Paris in 2015 of keeping average temperature rise to only 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (we’re currently at 1.1°C, and the impacts are already devastating for many people).

We’ve recently had a sermon series in Job in my church. Job suffers terribly, through no sin of his own. He doesn’t understand why he’s suffering so much. Towards the end of the book, God doesn’t directly answer his question, but has a lot to say to Job about His power over Creation. As we sing ‘Who has held the oceans in his hand? Who has numbered every grain of sand?’, the answer, of course, is only God.

The scientific explanation for global warming is that we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels. That doesn’t explain why God should allow this to happen, other than it’s a result of sin. But Job teaches us that whatever happens, however great the suffering and even when we can’t explain why, God is still in control.

So we don’t know exactly how things will work out, but we shouldn’t despair. Rather, we should keep trusting God and keep playing our part, by setting an example of good creation care and asking our governments to play their part with the urgency that this situation needs.