Monday was the hottest day ever recorded, surpassing the record set the day before, as countries around the world, from Japan to Bolivia to the United States, continued to be under the influence of high temperatures, according to the European climate change agency.
Provisional satellite data released by Copernicus early Wednesday showed Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degrees Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say the world is now as hot as it was 125,000 years ago because of man-made climate change. While they cannot say for sure that Monday was the hottest day in that period, average temperatures this high have not been seen since humans developed agriculture.
The rise in temperatures in recent decades is in line with what climatologists predicted would happen if fossil fuels continued to be burned at an ever-increasing rate.
“We are in an era where weather and climate records are often beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in insurmountable loss of life and livelihood,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
Preliminary Copernicus data show that the average global temperature on Monday was 17.15 degrees Celsius, or 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit. Beyond this week’s record, the previous record was last year. Until then, the hottest day on record had been in 2016, with an average temperature of 16.8 degrees Celsius, or 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit.
Although 2024 has been extremely warm, what pushed temperatures to new levels on Sunday was a warmer-than-usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same was happening in that region last year, when the record was reached in early July.
Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the U.S. and U.K. governments date back to 1880. Many scientists, taking that data into account along with tree rings and ice cores, say last year’s highs were the warmest on the planet in about 120,000 years. Now, the first six months of 2024 have matched them.
Without climate change, scientists say records for extreme temperatures would not be broken as frequently as in recent years.
Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations climate negotiations, said that “we will all burn and fry” if the world does not change course immediately.
“One third of the world’s electricity can be produced by solar and wind power alone, but specific national policies need to allow for this transformation,” he said.
Source: With information from AP
