World News

Monday broke record for hottest day on Earth ever

Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, , as cou🌠ntries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States conti♋nue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.

Provisional  publi𝓰shed by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius ꧃(0.1 degree Fahrenheit).

Climate scientists say the world is now as warm as it was 125,000 years ago because of human-caused climate change. While scientists caꦅnnot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures ha♎ve not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.

A tourist shielding himself from the sun with a fan while walking on a street in Seville during a heatwave.
A tourist shielding himself from the sun with a fan while walking on a street in Seville during a heatwave. AFP via Getty Images

The temperature 🔜rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at a🌠n increasing rate.

“We are in an age where weather and climate records are frequently stretched beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in﷽ insurmountable loss of lives and livelihoods,” Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

Copernicus’ preliminary data shows the global average temperature Monday was 17.15 degrees Celsius, or 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record before this week was set just a year ago. Before last year, the previous recorded hottest day was in 2016 when average temperatur🔥es were at 16.8 degrees Celsius, or 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit.

A waitress in Seville cooling herself with a fan at a restaurant during a heatwave on July 23, 2024
A waitress in Seville cooling herself with a fan at a restaurant during a heatwave on July 23, 2024. AFP via Getty Images

While 2024 has been extre🐬mely warm, what kicked this week into new territory was a warmer-than-usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same thing happened on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments go back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, taking those into consideration along with tree ♒rings and ice cor💝es, say last year’s record highs were the . Now the first six months of 2024 have broken even those.

Without , scientists say that extreme🐻 temperature records would not be broken nearly as frequently as is happening in recent years.

Former h𝔍ead of U.N. climate negotiations Christiana Figueres said “we all scorch and fry” if the world doesn’t immediately change course, “but targeted national policies have to enable that transformation.”

Scientists said it was “extraordinary” that such warm days have now occurred in two consecutive years especially when the natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean . “This is yet another illustration of just how much the Earth’s climate has warmed,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Aꦗngeles.