Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, , as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day含羞草研究社檚 record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say it含羞草研究社檚 plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.
But it含羞草研究社檚 a difficult determination to make, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, because data from tree-rings, corals and ice cores don含羞草研究社檛 go that far back globally.
The temperature rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate.
含羞草研究社淲e are in an age where weather and climate records are frequently stretched beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in insurmountable loss of lives and livelihoods,含羞草研究社� Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
含羞草研究社淒eaths from high temperatures show how catastrophic it is not to take stronger action on cutting CO2,含羞草研究社� which is the main heat-trapping gas, Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said in an email.
Copernicus含羞草研究社� preliminary data shows the global average temperature Monday was 17.15 degrees Celsius (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 temperatures were at 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit).
While 2024 has been extremely 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 cores, say last year含羞草研究社檚 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 head of U.N. climate negotiations Christiana Figueres said 含羞草研究社渨e all scorch and fry含羞草研究社� if the world doesn含羞草研究社檛 immediately change course, 含羞草研究社渂ut targeted national policies have to enable that transformation.含羞草研究社�
Scientists said it was 含羞草研究社渆xtraordinary含羞草研究社� that such warm days have now occurred in two consecutive years especially when the natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean . 含羞草研究社淭his is yet another illustration of just how much the Earth含羞草研究社檚 climate has warmed,含羞草研究社� said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles.
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