Data suggests, Sunday was world’s hottest day ever recorded
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By: Ajit Niranjan
July 23, 2024
World temperature records were shattered on Sunday on what may be the hottest day scientists have ever logged, data suggests.
Inflamed by the carbon pollution spewed from burning fossils and farming livestock, the average surface air temperature hit 17.09C (62.76F) on Sunday, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940. The reading inched above the previous record of 17.08C (62.74F) set on 6 July last year, but the scientists cautioned that the difference was not statistically distinguishable.
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” said the Copernicus director, Carlo Buontempo. “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 finding comes as large parts of the world roast in punishing heat. Hot weather fuels crackling wildfires that burn homes to a crisp, and triggers silent waves of mass mortality that spill through hospital wards and retirement homes.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who works on the Berkeley Earth data project, said the record was “certainly a worrying sign” on the back of 13 record-setting months and that it should show up in datasets from other research groups. “It also makes it even more likely that 2024 will beat 2023 as the warmest year on record.”
The rapid baking of the planet is expected to slow later this year, at least briefly, if a powerful weather pattern shifts from its neutral state into a cooler phase known as La Niña. But the underlying trend of global heating will persist as long as people pump gases into the atmosphere that act like a greenhouse.
Prof Peter Thorne, director of the Icarus centre at Maynooth University, Ireland, and a coauthor of an IPCC report that found humanity was responsible for all of the observed rise in temperatures since the 1850s, said Sunday’s record might one day be seen as “anomalously cool” if the world did not rapidly reach net zero emissions.
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