UN 
Last Sunday was the hottest day in the Earth’s recorded history, the European climate agency said. On Sunday, July 21, 2024, the Earth reached the highest temperature ever measured by humans, the European climate agency Copernicus said on Tuesday. It was the hottest day since records began in the late 1800s. In fact, researchers believe it may have been the hottest day in the last 100,000 years.
According to preliminary data from Copernicus, the global average temperature on Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 Fahrenheit), AP reported. That beat last year’s record of 17.08 degrees Celsius (62.74 Fahrenheit), set on July 6, 2023, by 0.01 degrees Celsius (0.02 Fahrenheit). Both Sunday’s record and last year’s record beat the previous record of 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), set in 2016.
“What is really surprising is how big the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and previous temperature records,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. “We are really in uncharted territory right now, and as the climate continues to warm, we will see new records broken in the coming months and years.”
According to Copernicus, while 2024 was exceptionally warm, it was the exceptionally harsh winter in Antarctica that pushed Sunday to a new record high. A similar situation occurred at the beginning of July last year.
On Sunday, not only Antarctica, but also inland California was scorched by triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures, sparking more than two dozen fires in the western United States. At the same time, Europe was battling its own deadly heat wave.
“There is a 92% chance that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record,” said Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. “Coming on the heels of 13 record-breaking months, this is certainly a worrying sign.”
July is typically the hottest month of the year because seasonal patterns in the Northern Hemisphere drive global temperatures.
The Copernicus records date back to 1940, while other global measurements by the U.S. and U.K. governments date back to 1880. Together with data such as tree rings and ice cores, scientists say last year’s record highs were the warmest the planet has seen in about 120,000 years. Now, the first six months of 2024 have surpassed even those records.
Scientists attribute the extreme heat to climate change caused by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and livestock farming. Natural El Niño warming of the central Pacific Ocean also contributes. Decreasing marine fuel pollution and possibly undersea volcanic eruptions are also said to be causing additional warming, but these factors are not as influential as greenhouse gases.
With El Niño likely to be replaced soon by a cooling La Niña, Hausfather said he would be surprised to see more monthly records in 2024, but the warm start to the year is likely to be warmer than last year.
Victor Gensini, a climate scientist at Northern Illinois University who was not part of the Copernicus team, said Sunday’s record was noteworthy, but the fact that recent years have been so much warmer than previous periods “makes your eyes pop out of your head.” “It’s definitely a fingerprint of climate change.”
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the difference between this year’s and last year’s highs was so small that he was surprised the European climate agency endorsed it. “We shouldn’t be comparing absolute temperatures for individual days,” Mann said.
“Yes, it’s a small difference, but more than 30,500 days have passed since the Copernicus data began in 1940, and this is the warmest of them all,” Gensini said.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said: “The important thing is that warming will continue as long as we put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we have the technology today to largely stop it. What’s missing is the political will,” he said.
