June 11 – The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed that May was the planet’s second warmest on record, both on land and in the oceans.

Although the climate change threshold of +1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels was not broken, the average surface temperature of the Earth came close to the record temperatures set last May, confirming that the Earth is continuing to warm.

Greenland and Iceland experienced record-breaking temperatures in May, resulting in a dramatic increase in ice melt, according to a report by the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA). Records show that the Greenland ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the historical average.