World's oceans hit record-high July temperatures

**Janet Jaleel** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel, and at 15 Hours GMT on Monday the 10th of August, these are our main stories. Scientists warned that the world's oceans have hit record high temperatures for July. Drones strike targets deep inside Russia in one of Ukraine's deadliest attacks yet. FIFA's embattled president, Gianni Infantino, faces yet more criticism from football confederations.
Also in this podcast, we hear how acupuncture is benefiting animals.

**Alex Mason** (0:38)
It really works through increasing the body's healing response, through mobilizing stem cells in the circulation, moving blood flow to the areas you're needling.

**Janet Jaleel** (0:51)
We start with more grim news about our warming planet. Scientists have found that the world's oceans were hotter last month than in any other July on record. In a new report, the European Union's climate change monitoring program, Copernicus, says average sea surface temperatures outside the polar regions hit nearly 21 degrees Celsius in July.
It also says that Western Europe experienced its hottest June and July on record, driven by the El Niño weather pattern developing in the Pacific. Diana Urge-Forsatz from the UN's Panel on Climate Change said the data showed that urgent action was needed.

**Diana Urge-Forsatz** (1:31)
Unless we stop global warming, these records are continued to be exceeded and the situation will continue to get worse and worse. More intensive heatwaves, more intensive droughts, more intensive downpours, as well as more places where white fires are burning up territories, and also the smoke is also very bad for an increasing area.

**Janet Jaleel** (1:55)
Our environment correspondent Matt McGraw told me more.

**Matt McGrath** (1:58)
The figures from Copernicus, the 20.96 degrees temperature for the oceans in July, the highest July recording that they've ever had.
I think the average, in some respects, hides the detail and the scale of the heating that's going into the oceans right now. So in some parts of Western Europe, temperatures in the seas were 8 degrees Celsius above the local norm you'd expect for that time of the year. So when we give these global average figures and people say, well, you know, that doesn't sound that much. When you see it on a local level, you see what's really happening in places like that, like in the Western Mediterranean. And this is happening in many, many parts of the world and it has many implications, I think, for our oceans. We're creating marine heatwaves of intense capacity around the oceans, which threaten sea life directly. But I suppose the biggest overall impact of the warming seas is the potential impact in sea level rise. Warming water expands. That pushes that water up onto the land in different places. And that can have a tremendous effect when it's combined with storms, heavy winds and other natural phenomena like that. So, yeah, there's a whole range of things hidden in the data here that have real impacts in real people's lives all across the world.

**Janet Jaleel** (3:12)
And this comes on top of all the wildfires that we've seen across Europe and North America.

**Matt McGrath** (3:17)
Yes, absolutely. We're seeing this, what's called a compound effect, where you have this drying out caused by the intense heat. And that soil that dries out then reflects more heat back into the atmosphere, makes the conditions warmer. So you get a vicious cycle, if you like, of drying heat in the atmosphere, drying ground, drying out continuously. And that is leaving a real tinderbox of effect. And we've had in Europe and many other places a very wet winter just a few months ago. Now it seems unbelievable to talk about it being a wet winter. But that winter fueled huge amounts of growth of grass, bushes and other material trees. And they all provided extreme, I suppose, fuel for these fires that have lit in North America, in Europe and many other places too.

**Janet Jaleel** (4:00)
And Matt, can we turn this around? Is there still time?

**Matt McGrath** (4:03)
I think it's going to be very difficult in the next year or two, because we have the impact of El Nino driving up the oceans, making the oceans warmer. We'll really feel the full effect of that next year. So I think for the short term, it's going to be very, very difficult. Longer term, political attention on the climate question has waned considerably.
I would be worried about that longer term. And I think short term, we're going to see perhaps many more difficult hours, many more difficult recordings of data over the next 12 months.

**Janet Jaleel** (4:33)
Matt McGrath, in what appears to be one of the deadliest air attacks by Ukraine on Russia so far, at least 13 people, including a child, have been killed by a drone strike deep inside Russian territory. Nearly 40 other people were wounded.