The global average surface temperature reached 17.15°C on Monday, just above the new record of 17.09°C set just on Sunday.
Following a record-breaking Sunday, Monday was the hottest day on record, according to preliminary data from a European Union watchdog.
The global average surface temperature reached 17.15 °C (62.87 °F) on Monday, beating the new record of 17.09 °C set just on Sunday.
Monday was the hottest day since 1940, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The record heat comes at a time when millions of people are suffering from heatwaves in Japan, China, the United States and around the world. Southern Europe is ‘hot as hell’In Spain temperatures rose to 44°C (111.2°F).
Meanwhile, a combination of heat and humidity caused severe conditions along the Gulf Coast, while high temperatures intensified wildfires in Greece, Portugal and North America.
“What’s really surprising is how big the difference is between the temperatures of the past 13 months and the previous record,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said.
“We are truly in uncharted territory right now, and as the climate continues to warm, new records will likely be broken in the coming months and years.”
The world’s highest temperature before July 2023 was 16.8°C, recorded on August 13, 2016.
However, after July 3, 2023, July-August 2023 and June-July 2024, there will be at least 57 days that break the previous record set in August 2016.
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What caused this new heatwave record, and why is the Earth getting hotter?
Global average temperatures tend to peak during the Northern Hemisphere summer, from late June to early August.
That’s because seasonal patterns in the Northern Hemisphere tend to influence temperatures across the globe.
But the new record is part of a “general warming trend” caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
Dr Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, said: “If the world keeps burning coal, oil and gas, exactly what the climate science predicts will happen – temperatures will keep rising until we stop burning fossil fuels and get to net zero emissions.”
Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s chief climate change negotiator from 2010 to 2016 and co-founder of Climate Optimism, said the group of 20 major economies must address the new “dangerous reality” with “policies to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and carefully phase out fossil fuels.”
But unlike last year, when a combination of climate change and El Niño warming led to new daytime records, that won’t be the case this year because El Niño is weakening.
Carsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Leipzig in Germany, said it was “astonishing” that the record had been broken.
This occurred even though the world was no longer feeling the effects of El Niño.
Another sign of a broader trend is the fact that the top 10 years for warmest daily average temperatures are the past decade, from 2015 to 2024.