The world is emerging from its warmest northern hemisphere summer since records began, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service said on Friday, as global warming continues to intensify.

The boreal summer of June to August this year blew past last summer to become the world’s warmest, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.

The exceptional heat increases the likelihood that 2024 will outrank 2023 as the planet’s warmest on record.

“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess.

Unless countries urgently reduce their planet-heating emissions, extreme weather “will only become more intense”, she said. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.

The planet’s changed climate continued to fuel disasters this summer. In Sudan, flooding from heavy rains last month affected more than 300,000 people and brought cholera to the war-torn country.

Elsewhere, scientists confirmed climate change is driving a severe ongoing drought on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Human-caused climate change and the El Nino natural weather phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, both pushed temperatures to record highs earlier in the year.

Copernicus said below-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific last month indicated a shift to La Nina, which is El Nino’s cooler counterpart.

But that didn’t prevent unusually high global sea surface temperatures worldwide, with average temperatures in August hotter than in the same month of any other year except for 2023.

C3S’ dataset goes back to 1940, which the scientists cross-checked with other data to confirm that this summer was the hottest since the 1850 pre-industrial period.

India is forecast to receive above-average rainfall in September after surplus rains in August, the weather department said.

The rainfall in September is likely to be more than 109% of a 50-year average, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director-general of the India Meteorological Department, told a virtual news conference.

Above-normal rainfall could damage summer-sown crops, such as rice, cotton, soybean, corn, and pulses, which are typically harvested from mid-September, Reuters reported.

Crop damage can lead to food inflation, but the rains may also result in higher soil moisture, benefiting the planting of winter-sown crops such as wheat, rapeseed, and chickpea.

India, the world’s second-largest producer of wheat, sugar, and rice, has imposed various curbs on the export of these farm commodities, and any losses due to excessive rainfall could prompt New Delhi to extend those curbs.

After receiving 9% more rainfall in July, India had 15.3% more rainfall than average in August as the north-western and central region of the country received heavy rainfall, which led to flooding in some states.

The country has recorded 6.9% more rainfall than average since the start of the monsoon season on June 1.

The lifeblood of a nearly $3.5-trillion economy, the annual monsoon brings almost 70% of the rain India needs to water farms and replenish reservoirs and aquifers. Without irrigation, nearly half the farmland in the country depends on the rains that usually run from June to September.

The monsoon generally starts to retreat by mid-September from the northwestern state of Rajasthan, ending across the country by mid-October.

However, the forecast for September indicates that this year’s withdrawal could be delayed.

“Forecast for September suggests that good rainfall activity over Rajasthan and Gujarat starts about 15th September. Nowadays, if you look at, the withdrawal is getting delayed,” Mohapatra said.

By mid-September, summer-sown crops become ready for harvesting, and rainfall during this time could damage the ripe crops, said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trade house.

At least six people were dead as Typhoon Shanshan crept eastward through Japan on Saturday, drenching large areas with torrential rain, triggering landslide and flood warnings hundreds of kilometres from the storm’s centre.

Footage on national broadcaster NHK showed homes with roofs partly sheered off while cars drove wheels-deep on flooded roads in the country’s southwest. The storm made landfall in Kyushu on Thursday, bringing record levels of rainfall, Reuters reported.

One person was missing and more than 100 have been injured, said Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency. More than 35,000 homes were without power in southern Kyushu’s Kagoshima prefecture, according to Kyushu Electric.

Shanshan, centred in the Pacific Ocean some 480 km (300 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 12:50 p.m. (0350 GMT), triggered heavy rain as far away as the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, despite being downgraded to a tropical storm on Friday. Winds were gusting up to 25 metres per second (90 kph, 55 mph).

Authorities have issued flood and landslide warnings around the country since the storm’s arrival, halting air and rail services and shutting factories.

The storm is forecast to weaken to a tropical depression over the weekend but is expected to continue to bring heavy rain, NHK reported.