Climate Crisis

Planet Earth sets record for hottest day in history, twice in a row

Copernicus Climate Change Service director says we are in ‘truly uncharted territory’

A man and his grandson fill tanks and bottles with water from a fountain in Agrigento, Sicily as parts of of Europe are experiencing one of their worst droughts in decades. Photograph: The New York Times
Thu Jul 25 2024 - 06:50

Monday was most likely the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, with a global average of about 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.15 degrees celsius, preliminary data showed — beating a record that had been set just one day before.

The data, released Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union institution that provides information about the past, present and future climate, caused alarm among some experts.

Earlier this week, the service announced that Sunday had set a record, with a global average of about 17.09 degrees. A day later it announced that Monday was the hottest day since at least 1940, when records began.

Before this week’s back-to-back records, the previous record, 17.08 degrees, was set last year, on July 6th, besting a record that stood since 2016.

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“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of the service, said in a news release announcing Sunday’s record. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”

Buontempo said in a statement on Wednesday that data showed there may be slightly lower temperatures in the next few days.

At a closer look, 2023 and 2024 have seen annual highs significantly above those recorded in previous years, the agency said. Another key sign of global warming was that the 10 years with the highest daily average temperatures are the last 10 years, 2015 to 2024.

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While researchers said Sunday’s record was not totally unexpected, as global temperatures typically reach their peak this time of year, several factors are contributing to their increase, including seasonal patterns in the Northern Hemisphere that drive worldwide temperatures and above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica.

Heat waves are becoming more severe and prolonged because of the global climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

As humans continue adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, experts say, record-breaking heat will become even more common, as will extreme weather events like droughts, wildfires and floods.

Nicholas Leach, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, said that as more greenhouse gases are being emitted into the atmosphere, global temperature records will continue to be broken. The attention the record was drawing serves as a stark reminder that global warming was still a threat, he said, and that it was not going away.

“What we should care more about is the potential increase in extreme weather, such as heavy rainfall events or heat waves that come along with the global warming,” Leach said.

Kathy Baughman McLeod, the CEO of Climate Resilience for All, an organization focused on extreme heat and its impacts, said that July could be the hottest month on record. “Even with El Nino receding, we’re still having these astronomical heat events,” she said. A contributing factor is that new buildings are still being constructed with materials that amplify heat or make coping with extreme heat more challenging, she added. “It is not mainstream to invest in cool materials.”

A United Nations panel said in a report last year that Earth was likely to reach a critical point for global warming within the next decade and that nations would need to make drastic changes — like moving away from fossil fuels — to prevent the planet from dangerously overheating.

The warming trend appears to be in line with other research, including a recent report that stated nearly 80 per cent of the world’s population experienced at least 31 days of atypical warmth since May 2023. - The New York Times.

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