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temperature records
Sunday Was Earth's Hottest Day on 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," one expert said.
Jul 23, 2024
July 21 was Earth's hottest day on record, overtaking the record set last July during the
hottest year in millennia.
The European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) found that Sunday's average air surface temperature soared to 17.09°C , or 62.76°F, according to preliminary data. While that is only 0.1°C warmer than the previous record—set on July 6, 2023—it was nearly 0.3°C higher than the pre-2023 record, set at 16.8°C on August 13, 2016.
"What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "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."
The news follows a year of shattered temperature records as El Niño combined with the climate emergency to heat air and ocean to levels well above average. While El Niño conditions ended in April, scientists still predict that 2024 could overtake 2023 as the hottest year on record.
As of June 2024, the past 13 months have all been the hottest of their kind on record. June 2024 was also the 12th month in a row to see its average temperature meet or surpass 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—the most ambitious temperature goal enshrined in the Paris agreement.
Scientists have warned that the only way to keep global temperatures from rising further is to rapidly phase out the use of oil, gas, and coal and transition to renewable energy.
"These recurring record-breaking temperatures are a scorching red flag, but it's not too late to reverse course."
Before Sunday, the last hottest day on record was July 6, 2023, which was also the fourth consecutive day to break that record. The previous record was set at 17.08°C, or 62.74°F, according to Copernicus. However, since the 2016 temperature record was first broken on July 3, 2023, 57 days in the past year have also surpassed it.
What's more, C3S found that the last 10 years have been the 10 years on record with the highest average daily temperatures.
"The difference in the highest daily average temperature between the lowest ranked of those 10 years (2015) and the previous record before 2023 (13 August 2016) was 0.2°C. The jump from the 2016 record to 2023/2024 is about 0.3°C, highlighting how substantial the warmth of 2023 and 2024," C3S said.
Record-breaking temperatures have also brought extreme weather.
On Sunday, Florida meteorologist Jeff Berardelli wrote on social media that "the most anomalously warm places were Antarctica and Western Canada where several hundred wildfires blaze, many out of control."
C3S also said that Sunday's record was in part driven by "much-above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica."
The warmest day on record also coincided with heatwaves in Russia, Europe, and the U.S., Reutersreported.
C3S predicted that temperatures would continue to rise in the short term.
"In the coming days, we are expecting the daily global average temperature to further increase and peak around 22 or 23 July 2024 and then go down, but with possible further fluctuations in the coming weeks," the agency said.
In the longer term, temperature trends will depend on whether policymakers can take ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of natural carbon sinks.
"These recurring record-breaking temperatures are a scorching red flag, but it's not too late to reverse course," Oceana Campaign director Joseph Gordon said in a statement. "When you're on the path to destruction, the best thing you can do is turn around."
Gordon recommended one thing U.S. President Joe Biden in particular could do to stop runaway climate change.
"One of the most immediate and impactful ways to address greenhouse gas emissions is to prevent new offshore drilling in the United States," Gordon said. "Offshore drilling drives climate change throughout its entire process. President Biden must permanently protect our coasts from offshore drilling and move us toward a clean energy future."
An earlier version of this article misstated the difference between the new temperature record and the pre-2023 record.
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Alarming Heat Streak Continues as February Shatters Temperature Record
"As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes," said the head of the E.U. climate service.
Mar 07, 2024
Last month was the warmest February on record, the European Union’s climate service said Wednesday, marking the ninth consecutive month of unprecedented heat as the climate crisis continues to drive up global temperatures.
Climate scientists say the climate crisis, without a doubt, is to blame for increased temperatures.
Not only was it warm above sea level—global ocean temperatures also reached a record high last month. That's not just for February but for any month on record.
"Ocean warming has prompted concerns about the mass bleaching of coral reefs. It also raises global sea levels and can help to fuel higher intensity hurricanes," the BBCreports. "Unusually warm waters may also have been a factor in another exceptional month for Antarctic sea ice. The three lowest minimum extents in the satellite era have now occurred in the last three years."
The #C3S's monthly climate bulletin is out now:
📈 February 2024 was globally the warmest on record;
📈 Global Sea Surface Temperatures hit record highs.
▶️https://t.co/XEmBnArhh6 pic.twitter.com/uUubVY9c05
— Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) March 7, 2024
Arctic sea ice is also disappearing, and the Arctic could be virtually ice-free during the summer within a decade.
"February joins the long streak of records of the last few months," said Carlo Buentempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes."
“The climate responds to the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so, unless we manage to stabilize those, we will inevitably face new global temperature records and their consequences,” Buentempo added.
The last year has been over 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages—1.56°C, to be exact—but that won't signify a breach of the goals set in the Paris Agreement unless temperatures remain elevated for the next few years.
"A year ago, the fact that the global temperature for a particular month would reach 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level would have been considered exceptional," Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at Copernicus, toldThe New York Times.
The world will have to get off of fossil fuels in order to halt runaway warming, and this year could help determine the future of the climate, considering one of the people running to lead the nation appears destined to unleash billions of tons of additional planet-warming emissions should he return to office.
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'Omen of the Future': Off-The-Charts Hot Oceans Scare Scientists
After 2023 was the hottest year in human history, experts warn that 2024 "has strong potential to be another record-breaking year."
Feb 27, 2024
While global policymakers continue to drag their feet on phasing out planet-heating fossil fuels, scientists around the world "are freaking out" about high ocean temperatures, as they toldThe New York Times in reporting published Tuesday.
A "super El Niño" has expectedly heated up the Pacific, but Times reporter David Gelles spoke with ocean experts from Miami to Cambridge to Sydney about record heat in the North Atlantic as well as conditions around the poles.
"The sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing," said Matthew England, a University of New South Wales professor who studies ocean currents. "The temperature's just going off the charts. It's like an omen of the future."
Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey who watches polar ice levels, told the paper that "we're used to having a fairly good handle on things. But the impression at the moment is that things have gone further and faster than we expected. That's an uncomfortable place as a scientist to be."
\u2026for almost a year now,\u201d McNoldy said. \u201cIt\u2019s just astonishing. Like, it doesn\u2019t seem real.\u201d Across the unusually warm Atlantic, in Cambridge, England, @rdlarter , a marine scientist who tracks polar ice levels, is equally perplexed. \u201cIt\u2019s quite scary, partly because\u2026— (@)
Last week, Jeff Berardelli, WFLA's chief meteorologist and climate specialist, also highlighted the warm North Atlantic and that "all signs are pointing to a busy hurricane season" later this year.
Noting that in the middle of this month, sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were around 2°F higher than the 1990-2020 normal and nearly 3°F above the 1980s, Berardelli explained:
That may not sound like a lot, but consider this is averaged over the majority of the basin shown in the red outline in the image above. A deviation like that is unheard of... until now.
To put it into more relatable terms, considering what's been normal for the most recent 30 years, the statistical chance that any February day would be as warm as it is right now is 1-in-280,000. That's not a typo. This is according to University of Miami researcher Brian McNoldy...
And that 1-in-280,000 is compared against a recent climate, which had already been warmed substantially by climate change. If you tried to compare it against a climate considered normal around the year 1900, the math would become nonsensical. Meaning an occurrence like this simply would not be possible.
McNoldy also stressed the shocking nature of current conditions to the Times, telling Gelles that "the North Atlantic has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now... It's just astonishing. Like, it doesn't seem real."
The new comments from McNoldy and other scientists come on the heels of various institutions and experts worldwide recently confirming that 2023 was the hottest year in human history. Research also showed that it was the warmest year on record for the oceans, which capture about 91% of excess heat from greenhouse gases.
As Common Dreamsreported last month, Adam Scaife, a principal fellow at the United Kingdom's Met Office, said that "it is striking that the temperature record for 2023 has broken the previous record set in 2016 by so much because the main effect of the current El Niño will come in 2024."
That's the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, a climate phenomenon that also has a cool phase called La Niña expected later this year. Still, Scaife warned that "the Met Office's 2024 temperature forecast shows this year has strong potential to be another record-breaking year."
Throughout the record-shattering 2023, experts also expressed alarm. After an April study showed that the ocean is heating up faster than previously thought, the BBCrevealed that some scientists declined to speak about it on the record, reporting that "one spoke of being 'extremely worried and completely stressed.'"
In July, when a buoy roughly 40 miles south of Miami recorded a sea surface temperature of 101.1°F just after a "100% coral mortality" event at a restoration site, Florida State University associate professor Mariana Fuentes toldNPR that "if you have several species that are being impacted at the same time by an increase in temperature, there's going to be a general collapse of the whole ecosystem."
The following month, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that the average daily global ocean surface temperature hit 69.7°F, and deputy director Samantha Burgess said, "The fact that we've seen the record now makes me nervous about how much warmer the ocean may get between now and next March."
"The more we burn fossil fuels, the more excess heat will be taken out by the oceans, which means the longer it will take to stabilize them and get them back to where they were," Burgess emphasized at the time.
Last year ended with a United Nations climate summit that scientists called "a tragedy for the planet," because the final deal out of the conference—led by an Emirati oil CEO—did not demand a global phaseout of fossil fuels.
Azerbaijan, which is set to host this year's U.N. conference in November, has similarly selected a former fossil fuel executive to lead the event. The country also plans to increase its gas production by a third during the next decade.
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