This week, Earth has experienced an unprecedented heatwave driven by warming oceans, an unusually warm Antarctica, and escalating climate change.
According to the European climate service Copernicus, Sunday, July 21, and Monday, July 22, were the hottest days ever recorded.
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Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that when Tuesday's data is in, it will likely show three consecutive days of record-breaking global heat.
"These peaks are usually not isolated," Buontempo said.
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Provisional satellite data released by Copernicus on Wednesday indicates that Monday was 0.06 degrees Celsius hotter than Sunday, which was 0.01 degrees Celsius hotter than the previous record set on July 6, 2023.
In addition to warmer oceans and Antarctica, the western United States, Canada, and eastern Siberia have experienced particularly high temperatures in recent days.
What are greenhouse gases and where do they come from?
Greenhouse gases are components in the atmosphere that trap the sun's heat, helping to maintain Earth's temperature at a habitable level.
However, human activities such as burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) have increased the concentration of these gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). This increase traps more heat in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures.
This is human-caused climate change in action, according to Buontempo and other scientists.
"The climate is generally warming up as a consequence of the increase in greenhouse gases," he explained.
More than 1,600 locations worldwide tied or broke heat records in the past seven days, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Climate scientists say this could be the warmest period in 120,000 years due to human-caused climate change. Although scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day in that period, long-term average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.
"The Earth has set heat records for 13 straight months. The global average temperature over the past year is more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times, seeming to exceed the globally agreed-upon limit for warming," Buontempo said. "When that threshold was set in 2015, it was meant to apply over 20 or 30 years, not just 12 months."
Buontempo indicated that the high temperatures in recent days are consistent with the idea of a change in the rate of temperature increase, though it is too soon to draw definitive conclusions. Other scientists do not see signs of acceleration.
July is generally the hottest month for the planet as a whole, Buontempo said. While 2024 has been extremely warm, what pushed this week into new territory was an unusually warm Antarctic winter, with temperatures 6 to 10 degrees Celsius above normal. The same thing happened on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.
If it weren't for Antarctica, it's likely the record would not have been broken, Buontempo added. The El Niño phenomenon, a temporary warming phase of the Pacific Ocean that alters global weather and spikes temperatures, ended earlier this year, and a cooler La Niña phase is expected. Nevertheless, the El Niño effect lingers, and the oceans have been breaking heat records for 15 months.
Copernicus began keeping heat records in 1940, but measurements by the U.S. and U.K. governments date back to 1880. Buontempo and other scientists say 2024 is likely to be hotter than the record-breaking 2023.
Global average temperature records are usually broken by very small fractions of a degree, as was the case here: Monday's temperature was just 0.01 degrees Celsius higher than the 2023 record. However, Buontempo emphasized that what truly impacts us is not the global mean temperature but what's happening in our immediate environment, in our rivers and mountains.
