Japan, India and Australia: these countries that break heat records

The temperatures are exploding the counters. As heat records continue to be broken around the world, Japan, Australia and India recently experienced the hottest months on record.

Between June and August, Japan experienced the hottest average temperatures ever recorded in the archipelago since the establishment of comparable statistics in 1898, announced Friday, September 1 the country's meteorological agency (JMA).

During this period, "average summer temperatures in Japan were significantly higher in the north, east and west of the country," the JMA said. "The average temperature anomaly in Japan, based on observations at 15 different locations, was 1.76°C, greatly exceeding that of 2010 (1.08°C), which was the highest on record" since statistics began to be recorded in 1898, the agency added.

“Compared to years with particularly high average summer temperatures (2010, 2013, 2018 and 2022), the number of extremely hot days increased significantly from the end of July, becoming the highest since 2010,” continues the agency.

Ditto for Australia, which has just gone through a winter (June-August) of around 17 degrees Celsius. These two months were the hottest on record, the country's Bureau of Meteorology said on Friday. Simon Grainger, senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the average winter temperature in Australia was 16.75 degrees Celsius from June to August, slightly above the previous record set in 1996.

Australia's first weather records date back to 1910. La Niña weather conditions have brought warm winters and cooler, wetter summers to much of Australia in recent years. According to data from the Bureau of Meteorology, the winter that ended Thursday, August 31, saw the second-highest maximum temperatures on record, as well as some of the highest minimum temperatures.

Australian researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change is amplifying the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.

In India, August is breaking records. It was the hottest and driest since records began more than a century ago, the Indian meteorological office said on Friday, following a series of temperature records recorded on the globe this summer.

“The average and maximum temperatures in August 2023 were the highest since 1901”, specifies the Indian agency, mainly attributing this record “to a deficit of precipitation and a weak monsoon”.