This Week Earth Breaks Record for the Hottest Day
- Spacenews
Jakarta – On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 was the hottest day on Earth ever recorded, according to preliminary data sources just released by scientists. The day broke the record set the day before.
This comes as scientists say that planet Earth has just faced its hottest day in 125,000 years. Experts believe that there will be many more heat records this season.
Earth's average temperature rose to 62.9 degrees, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, a tool based on satellite data and computer simulations.
It was the highest temperature for that data set since record-keeping began in 1979.
These unusual temperatures are the result of a combination of human-caused climate change, a stronger El Nino heatwave and a faster start to summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Based on climate data studied, such as ice cores, tree rings and sediments.
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- NASA
"(The Earth) hasn't been this hot since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial," said Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute, London.
This warming trend is caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal that releases "greenhouse" gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere. These gases have caused the Earth's temperature to rise over the past century to levels that cannot be explained by natural variability.
Daily heat records may be broken again, either this week or in the weeks to come. "We'll probably see some warmer days in the next six weeks," writes Berkeley Earth's Robert Rohde.
Rohde says that although the new data set began in 1979, "other data sets allow us to look further back and conclude that today is warmer than at any point since instrument measurements began, and probably long before that as well. Global warming is taking us to a world we don't recognize."
The natural El Nino climate pattern also plays a major role in the Earth's rising temperatures: "The occurrence of El Nino will greatly increase the likelihood of record-breaking temperatures and trigger more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the oceans," the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said in a statement.
El Nino occurs on average every two to seven years, and when it lasts it is usually for nine to 12 months.
It is a natural climate pattern associated with warming sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. However, it occurs in the context of a climate altered by human activity, the World Meteorological Organization said.
