Global warming: Earth records hottest day ever on Tuesday, July 4
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: This week’s Tuesday (July 4), when the United States celebrated its Independence Day, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
The average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F), and then shot up even upwards to 17.02C on Tuesday as summer heats up across the Northern Hemisphere, the media reported.
Officials in different countries reported an uptick in heat-related deaths and ailments as temperatures exceed 40C (104F) in many places this summer.
Until now, the highest officially registered temperature was 56.7C (134F), recorded in California’s Death Valley in 1913. The hottest known temperature in Africa was 55C (131F), recorded in Kebili, Tunisia in 1931. Iran holds the record for Asia’s hottest official temperature of 54C (129F), noted in 2017.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Europe was 48.8C (119.8F) on the Italian island of Sicily on August 11, 2021. The United Kingdom recorded its highest-ever temperature, 40.2C (104.4F), on July 19, 2022, according to its Meteorological Office.
In 2020, Seymour Island in Antarctica recorded a maximum temperature of 20.7C (69.3F). According to the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO), temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by nearly 3C (5.4F) over the past 50 years.
At least 22 countries have recorded maximum temperatures of 50C (122F) or above in the preceding decades.
To ensure accurate readings, weather stations use specialist platinum resistance thermometers placed in shaded instruments known as a Stevenson screen at a height of 1.25-2 meters (4-6 feet) above the ground, the media reported.
At present, only a few countries, including the United States, use Fahrenheit as their official scale. Most of the world now uses the Celsius scale named after Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius who invented the 0-100 degree freezing and boiling point scale in 1742.
Earth’s global average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Collectively, the past eight years have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began in the 1880s, NASA said.
This annual temperature data makes up the global temperature record, which tells scientists the planet is warming.
According to NASA’s temperature record, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record.
The new highs illustrate the extremity of 2023’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and bring into focus the slow pace of global progress on curbing emissions.
The heat this summer has already put millions of people around the world at risk. China is experiencing a scorching new heat wave less than two weeks after temperatures broke records in Beijing. Extreme heat in India last month was linked to deaths in some of its poorest regions. Last week saw a dangerous heat dome cover Texas and northern Mexico, while the UK baked in its hottest June on record.
El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific Ocean for the first time in seven years and will trigger a surge in temperatures, the WMO said.
“The onset of El Niño will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a Tuesday statement.
It’s likely the world will exceed the 1.5C of warming “in the near term,” with efforts on climate action still insufficient, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in March in a report summarizing five years of its own research.
Global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut to 60 percent below the 2019 levels by the year 2035, as climate-related risks are rising with every increment of warming, it said.
“Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. He urged nations to rapidly accelerate plans to phase out the use of fossil fuels.
