24 July, 2024
The European climate change service Copernicus said Monday broke the world's hottest day record that was just set a day earlier.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said the daily global average temperature reached 17.15 degrees Celsius on Monday. Earlier satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday's temperature broke the previous day's record by 0.06 degrees Celsius.
Countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States are said to be having hot conditions.
Climate scientists say the world is now as warm as it was 125,000 years ago. They blame human-caused climate change for the warm temperatures.
Scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the hottest day in more than 100,000 years since data does not go back that far. But average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture, the Associated Press reports.
The temperature rise in recent years supports what climate scientists predicted would happen if humans kept burning oil, natural gas, and coal at an increasing rate.
Roxy Mathew Koll is a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in western India. Koll said, “We are in an age where weather and climate records are frequently stretched beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in insurmountable loss of lives and livelihood.”
Copernicus' early data shows the global average temperature on Monday, July 22, was 17.15 degrees Celsius. Before last summer, the previous recorded hottest day was in 2016 when the average temperature reached 16.8 degrees Celsius.
The European agency said what caused this week's high temperatures was a warmer-than-usual Antarctic winter. The same thing happened last year when a record was set in early July.
Copernicus records go back to 1940. Other global measurements by the United States and British governments go back to 1880. Many scientists also consider tree growth rings and ice samples. They say that information suggests that last year's record high temperatures were the hottest in about 120,000 years.
Now, temperatures reported in the first six months of 2024 have broken the earlier records.
Without human-caused climate change, scientists say that extreme temperature records would not be broken nearly as often.
Former head of U.N. climate negotiations Christiana Figueres said “We all scorch and fry” if the world does not immediately change course.
“One third of global electricity can be produced by solar and wind alone, but targeted national policies have to enable that transformation,” she said.
I'm Anna Matteo.
Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu reported this story for the Associated Press. Mario Ritter, Jr. adapted it for VOA Learning English.
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Words in This Story
frequently –adv. taking place often
tolerance –n. the ability to survive or withstand some event or pressure
insurmountable –adj. impossible to recover from
sample –n. an amount of something that is taken for study usually in a laboratory
scorch –v. to burn with a flame or high heat
fry –v. to cook using hot oil