The world experienced its hottest year in 2024 since records began, but in the small South American country of Uruguay, global warming was counteracted by bouts of “near-historic” cold.
Last year was the warmest globally since data recording began in 1850, Europe’s climate monitor Copernicus said Friday, confirming what it had been predicting for months.
But in Uruguay, nestled between Brazil and Argentina, the 2024 winter was nearly two degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than usual, and summer took its time to arrive.
The country’s average annual temperature was 18.1 degrees Celsius, Mario Bidegain of the Uruguayan Meteorological Institute told AFP.
2017 had been Uruguay’s warmest year on record since 1980, with an average of 18.8 degrees C.
But last year, said Bidegain, the country experienced “a near-historic cold spell” during the southern hemisphere winter in July and August, with frost, atypical in the country, recorded nationwide on …