Monday's temperatures shattered the record set just a day earlier, making it the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
Preliminary satellite data published by Copernicus shows Monday, July 22, reached 17.15 degrees Celsius, around 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature surpassed Sunday, July 21's by 0.06 degrees Celsius, which held the record for hottest day at 17.09 degrees Celsius, around 62.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat records are consistently being broken across the world.
"The global average temperature was already at near-record levels in recent days, after being at record levels for the time of year for more than a year," Rebecca Emerton a C3S climate scientist told Newsweek in an email.
Typically, global average temperatures peak between late June and early August, coinciding with the northern hemisphere summer where land masses warm up faster than the oceans of the Southern hemisphere can cool off, according to the C3S.
Emerton said, "much of the globe is seeing warmer-than-average conditions, and our analysis suggests that the sudden rise in the daily global average temperature is related to the much-above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica."
She noted that "such large anomalies are not unusual during the Antarctic winter months, and also contributed to the record global temperatures in early July 2023. Antarctic sea ice extent is also almost as low as it was at this time last year, leading to above-average temperatures over parts of the Southern Ocean."
C3S' data is based on surface air temperatures recorded 2 meters above the Earth's surface.
Natalie Mahowald, chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, told Newsweek in an email Wednesday: "These record highs and their dramatic impacts on humans for example the deaths in Saudi Arabia show the horrible consequences of delaying cuts in CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions."
In June, at least 1,301 people died due to extreme heat while on the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius, upward of 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
"These health impacts from high temperatures are small compared to what we will experience in the future if we don't cut emissions quickly and deeply," Mahowald said.
Climate activists have repeatedly called upon governments to establish clear emissions-cutting policies to mitigate and slow the effects of climate change.
Climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions has increased global temperatures significantly, resulting in adverse and life-threatening environmental effects across the globe.
C3S' Climate Pulse graph charts global temperature averages, revealing a dramatic upward shift in temperature trends from over eight decades. It shows that on July 22, 1940, the global temperature daily average was 13.74 degrees Celsius, around 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. The U.S. and U.K. government's have global measurements that date back further.
While it cannot be concretely confirmed that Monday was the hottest day throughout the Earth's past 120,000 years, it is largely agreed upon that it is so since human agricultural activity, according to The Associated Press.
Since July 3, 2023 "there have been 58 days that have exceeded that previous record, distributed between July and August 2023, and during June and July so far in 2024," the C3S wrote in an article updated today.
Emerton added in her statement to Newsweek: "While fluctuations are to be expected, as the climate continues to warm, we are likely to keep seeing records being broken, and each new record is taking us further into uncharted territory."
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