Last month was not only the hottest August ever recorded by scientists with modern equipment, it was also the second hottest month measured, just behind July 2023, the WMO and European climate service Copernicus announced.

August was about 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial averages, which is the warming threshold the world is trying not to exceed.

But the 1.5 ºC threshold is calculated over decades, and not just in one month, so scientists do not consider this brief passage to be that significant, according to the North American agency AP.

So far, 2023 is the second hottest year on record, behind 2016, according to Copernicus.

The southern hemisphere, where many heat records were broken in the middle of the southern winter, was not spared, according to Copernicus, cited by the French agency AFP.

“The season of June-July-August 2023, which corresponds to summer in the northern hemisphere, where the vast majority of the world's population lives, “was by far the hottest ever recorded in the world, with a global average temperature of 16. 77 ºC”.