European Climate Service: July 21, hottest day ever recorded

2024-07-24 08:34:36, Aktualitet CNA

European Climate Service: July 21, hottest day ever recorded

Some citizens cooling off at the fountains in a Madrid park on July 23, 2024. Source, AFP

July 21 was the hottest day ever recorded worldwide, according to preliminary data released on July 23 by the European Union's weather watchdog.

The Climate Change Service, Copernicus (C3S), said the global average surface air temperature was 17.09 degrees Celsius on Sunday, the highest temperature ever recorded. Their temperature measurements started in 1940.

The announcement comes as Europe and the United States are grappling with heat waves and wildfires.

"Earth has just experienced its hottest day," the monitoring service said in a statement.
The new daily record, which was recorded, was 0.01 degrees Celsius more than the previous record of 17.08 recorded on July 6, 2023.

"On July 21, C3S recorded a new global average daily temperature record," the service's director, Carlo Buontempo, said in a statement.

"We're really in uncharted territory right now and as the climate continues to warm, we're going to have more records to break in the coming months and years," he said.

Although the published figures represent a slight increase compared to the previous record, Buontempo said that over the past 13 months, record heat has been recorded around the world.

Every month since June 2023 has recorded a temperature record compared to the same month in previous years.

In this context, Copernicus said that it would not be unexpected that this record would also be broken during this summer.

Climate change is causing extreme weather events that are longer, more intense and more frequent, such as heat waves, floods and fires.

This year, heat waves have already hit North America, Mexico, India and Thailand, while floods have caused damage in parts of East Africa, China and Brazil.

There are hot spots in large parts of southern and eastern Europe, but also in Canada and the United States.

The burning of fossil fuels is estimated to be the main driver of global warming, but greenhouse gas emissions are also continuing to rise despite international efforts for the world to switch to clean energy and slow the rise in temperatures.

2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 could become the hottest year, given the "hot enough temperatures" experienced so far this year, Copernicus said./ REL