The daily global average temperature on Sunday reached a new record high. The record was broken again on Monday, according to the European weather monitoring agency Copernicus.
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The planet has just witnessed two back-to-back days of record-breaking daily global average temperatures, despite the El Niño pattern ending over a month ago.
The weather pattern, which is associated with the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central-east equatorial Pacific, led to unprecedented heat and off-the-charts temperatures in recent months, with 2023 becoming the hottest year in history. Every month so far this year has also broken records.
June became the 12th consecutive month to see average temperatures above 1.5C compared to pre-industrial times. While this does not signal a permanent breach of the critical limit, which scientists say is measured over decades, it sends a clear warning to humanity that we are approaching the point of no return much faster than expected. The critical threshold was established in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement. Breaching it, scientists warn, could trigger multiple tipping points, with devastating and often irreversible consequences affecting the planet’s life-support systems that all societies depend on.
Based on preliminary data released Wednesday by Copernicus, the daily global average temperature on Monday was 17.15C, breaking the previous record of 17.09C set just one day before on Sunday.
“While the temperature on 21 July 2024 (17.09ºC) was almost indistinguishable from the previous record of 17.08ºC reached on 6 July 2023, the difference between these and the new record temperature (17.15°C) reached on 22 July is larger than typical differences in day-to-day variations among alternative datasets,” the weather agency said. All ten of the highest global average temperature days have occurred this decade, it added.
Warming Planet
The increase in extreme heat is a direct result of our warming planet. The primary drivers of global warming are greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere, raising Earth’s surface temperature. This leads to longer and hotter heatwaves.
Stress on human bodies caused by heat prevents normal daily activities and our ability to cool down properly. Areas that generally have more humidity can also put lives at risk. Sweat helps our bodies cool off, but humidity changes the way sweat evaporates from the body. Not being able to cool down – especially as night-time temperatures remain high – puts people’s health at risk. This can lead to increased cardiovascular and respiratory complications, dehydration, heatstroke, higher blood pressure, and sleep deprivation.
Excessively hot and humid conditions can be deadly, as they affect humans’ thermoregulation. Whatever the changes in external conditions, this process helps us maintain a steady internal body temperature of ideally between 36.5 to 37.5C. In other words, when the threshold – a theoretical upper limit of the human body’s adaptability to extreme heat, which scientists set at 35C – is breached, sweating will not be enough to cool off the body.
An October 2023 study warned that heat and humidity levels will reach lethal levels for hours, days, and even weeks in some parts of the world by the end of the century. Even if warming is below 2C, the study says it will make staying outdoors impossible in such places.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent with heat-related mortality increasing by around 30% in the past two decades. Meanwhile, heat-related deaths are estimated to have increased in 94% of the European regions monitored.
More than 80% of heat-related deaths predicted in the Middle East and North Africa by the end of this century could be prevented if global warming is limited to 2C, according to a 2023 study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
So far, the world has warmed by 1.2C compared to pre-industrial times – with more than two-thirds of this warming occurring since 1975.
A recent exclusive survey conducted by the Guardian revealed that the 1.5C goal is increasingly out of reach, with nearly half of all lead authors and review editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports since 2018 saying they believe humanity will breach the threshold. Of the 380 authors and editors interviewed by the Guardian, 132 (34.7%) expect global temperatures to rise by 2.5C this century, while 100 (26.3%) predict at least 3C of warming.
Featured image: igorovsyannykov/Pixabay.
