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Here we go again. If you flashback to this moment last year, you may remember a barrage of “hottest day ever” headlines. In fact, July 2023 featured the hottest day ever recorded on the third day of the month only to have the very next day set an even higher mark. Temps continued to climb until July 6 and the month ended up being the hottest overall in 120,000 years (or ever, possibly) by the time it was all said and done.
Well, it looks like our planet is doing the same thing once more with July 21 and July 22 setting new hottest-day-ever records. Preliminary data from the European Climate Service says Monday reached a global temperature of 17.15 degrees Celsius (62.87 degrees Fahrenheit), which was .06 degrees Celsius above Sunday’s global temperature. This edges out the July 2023 record by .01 degrees Celsius (.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
Whenever we dive into this subject there is always a discussion about whether or not climate change and single-day records like this are a result of human-caused acceleration or a natural cycle of the Earth. While evidence of human-driven climate change is consistently piling up, Carlo Buontempo, the director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service told the Associated Press that temperatures this week are consistent with these ideas but it’s too soon to reach a definitive conclusion. He still says the overall trend is proof of human-caused climate change in action.
“It may be the first sign of change in the rate of the temperature increase,” Buontempo said.
July is consistently the hottest month of each year. Scientists are accepting that our changing climate and the greenhouse gases we contribute to the rising temperatures are factors in this new pattern of record highs. Antarctica is currently experiencing an unseasonably warm winter this year. Scientists have concluded already that we wouldn’t have seen this week’s new records without the conditions experienced in Antarctica right now.
