July 21 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, scientists say

The planet’s average temperature on July 21 was 17.09C - breaking a record set only last year. Photo / 123RF

Global temperatures hit the highest levels in recorded history on Sunday, according to preliminary data from Europe’s top climate monitor - another worrying sign of how human-caused climate change is pushing the planet into dangerous new territory.

The results from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show the planet’s average temperature on July 21 was 17.09C - breaking a record set only last year. The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen.

“We are in truly uncharted territory,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “And as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see records being broken in future months and years.”

Though Sunday was only slightly warmer than the world’s previous hottest day, Copernicus researchers noted, it was extraordinarily hotter than anything that came before. Before July 2023, Earth’s daily average temperature record - set in August 2016 - was 16.8C. But in the past year, the global has exceeded that old record on 57 days.

“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Buontempo said.

Scientists have only been tracking global temperatures for the past few centuries. Yet there is good reason to believe that Sunday was the hottest day on Earth since the start of the last Ice Age more than 100,000 years ago. Research from paleoclimate scientists - who use tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and other ancient material to understand past environments - suggests that recent heat would have been all but impossible over the last stretch of geologic time.

Sunday’s record-setting heat was felt on nearly every continent. Huge swaths of Asia sweltered amid scorching days and dangerously hot nights. Triple-digit temperatures in the western United States fueled out-of-control wildfires. Around much of Antarctica, Copernicus data show, temperatures were as high as 12C above normal.

According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, 550 places around the planet saw record high daily temperatures in the past seven days alone.

The unrelenting heat has scientists increasingly convinced that this year could prove even hotter than last. In an analysis published last week, researchers at the climate science nonprofit Berkeley Earth estimated that 2024 has a 92% chance of setting a new annual heat record. The average temperature for the year is almost certain to exceed 1.5C above preindustrial levels - surpassing what scientists say is the threshold for tolerable warming.

“It is troubling but not surprising that we are hitting record temperatures this year,” Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at the nonprofit Climate Central, wrote in an email. “We continue to add carbon pollution to the atmosphere, so global temperatures will continue to go up.”