Currently, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere is higher than it was last year at this time of year, as illustrated by the image below, created with University of Maine content. The image shows that a temperature of 21.1°C was reached in the Northern Hemisphere on June 17, 2024. The question is: Will temperatures over the next few months exceed the high temperatures reached last year?

Nonetheless, there are fears that temperatures will remain high and continue to rise, as self-amplifying feedbacks have taken over as the dominant drivers of the temperature rise. This was discussed earlier, in recent posts such as this one and this one.

Rising temperatures are also behind the decline of sea ice and permafrost, which can in turn result in huge emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Deformation of the Jet Stream is another important feedback and it particularly affects the Northern Hemisphere where the Arctic heats up more rapidly than the rest of the world, thus narrowing the temperature difference between the Tropics and the Arctic, which changes the shape of the Jet Stream. The Jet Stream will meander more and can at times even form circular wind patterns in some areas, which can strongly amplify extreme weather events such as storms that come with flooding and heatwaves that come with forest fires on land. Over oceans, the impact of deformation of the Jet Stream is even larger, since wind tends to be stronger over oceans than over land. Near the ocean, the greater temperature difference between land and sea will result in stronger winds.