World sees warmest June

Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average in June across much of permafrost-laden Siberia, with last month in a dead heat for the warmest June on record globally, the European Union's climate monitoring network Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said yesterday. Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated the region last summer, C3S reported. Both the number and intensity of fires in Siberia and parts of Alaska have increased since mid-June, resulting in the highest carbon emissions for the month -- 59 million tonnes of CO2 -- since records began in 2003.