Washington – Sunday was the most important day warm In the modern history of the planet, another record that has been broken in the last two years, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Tuesday.
Preliminary data from Copernicus showed the global temperature on Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 °F), beating the record set on July 6, 2023 by 0.01 °C (0.02 °F). Both Sunday’s and last year’s temperatures surpassed the previous record of 16.8 °C (62.24 °F) set in 2016.
Without him climate change caused by man, records would not be broken as frequently, and new cold records would be reached as often as warm ones.
“What is really astonishing is how big the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and previous temperature records.”Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate continues to warm, we are likely to see new records broken in the months and years ahead.”
Although 2024 has been extremely warm, what pushed temperatures into new territory on Sunday was a warmer-than-usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same was happening in that region last year, when the record was reached in early July.
But Sunday was not just about one thing Antarctica less cold. The interior of California temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) have fueled more than two dozen wildfires in the western United States. At the same time, Europe is suffering a deadly heat wave.
“It is certainly a worrying sign that we have been setting a record for 13 consecutive months,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, who estimates there is a 92% chance that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.
Copernicus records date back to 1940, but other global measurements by governments in the USA and the United Kingdom date back to 1880. Many scientists, taking that data into account along with tree rings and ice cores, said last year’s highs were the warmest on the planet in about 120,000 years. Now, the first six months of 2024 have matched them.