In recent years, summers have been marked by a mixture of weariness and suffering due to the extremely high temperatures that have preceded them. And perhaps some of you may remember a joke that went viral in networks during the past 2022 that went something like this: we were not facing the hottest summer in history, but the coolest summer of our lives.
Without going any further, the summer of 2023 has already resulted in almost 3,000 deaths attributable to high temperatures in Spain alone. It also has the dubious honor of being the third warmest summer on record in our own country.
For its part, NASA comes to reaffirm these catastrophic data. Through X (formerly known as Twitter), NASA has announced that the summer of 2023 has been the hottest summer in the history of our planet since world records were established.
According to the press release issued by NASA, these data clearly confirm “a long-term warming trend“. One of the main reasons for this “global warming” lies in the very high sea surface temperatures that have been recorded, also due to El Niño, a natural climatic phenomenon.
Of course, the consequences of this phenomenon, added to the large greenhouse gas emissions, have not been long in coming. What we have experienced this summer is only a warning of what is to come. According to Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist and director of GISS, “climate change is happening […] and it will get worse if we continue to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. While it is not too late to act on the climate crisis, the point of no return is closer than ever.
