Stockholm (NordSIP) – It appears we break temperature records for planet Earth every summer. Ostensively, 2024 is not an exception. According to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), on 22 July 2024, the daily global average temperature reached a new record high of 17.16°C, 0.07°C more than the previous record of 17.09°C, set the previous day (21 July 2024), and 0.08°C more than the previous record set on 6 July 2023. However, another peak may still come.
“On July 21st, C3S recorded a new record for the daily global mean temperature. What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records. We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years,” C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said, commenting on the record set on 21 July 2024. “We now have a new record, and its value is sufficiently large to indicate with some confidence that this has exceeded the record set only last year. The event is still ongoing and it is possible the date of the peak may still change, but our data suggest we may see slightly lower temperatures in the next few days,” Buontempo added.
The temperature record was confirmed by NASA and by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). “In a year that has been the hottest on record to date, these past two weeks have been particularly brutal,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This new report of a daily global average temperature record is noteworthy because we are no longer in an El Niño warm phase and it has occurred during an extended period of extraordinary heat – June 2024 was the thirteenth month in a row of record-breaking global temperatures,” WMO Director of Climate Services Chris Hewitt added.
The Worst May Yet be to Come
According to the analysis of C3S, the sudden rise in daily global average temperature was related to much above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica (South Pole), anomalies that are not unusual during the Antarctic winter months. The same dynamics were behind the record global temperatures in early July 2023. As Antarctic Sea ice decreases, temperatures in the South Atlantic increase, leading to a rise in global temperatures.
C3S also warns that we may not yet be out of the (hot) water. “As the annual maximum global average temperature can occur any time between late June and the middle of August, the current conclusions are preliminary as we follow the evolution of the climate in near-real-time. In 2023, there was a second peak in the daily global average temperature on 4 August (reaching 17.05°C) that came close to the record set on 6 July 2023,” C3S informs.
A Call to Action
On the back of this new record, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ issued a Call to Action on Extreme Heat bringing together the diverse expertise and perspectives of ten specialized UN entities, FAO, ILO, OCHA, UNDRR, UNEP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, WHO, WMO.
The initiative calls for an urgent and concerted effort to enhance international cooperation to address extreme heat in four critical areas: Caring for the vulnerable – Protecting workers – Boosting resilience of economies and societies using data and science – Limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up investment in renewable energy.
“Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic — wilting under increasingly deadly heatwaves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world. That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit. And halfway to boiling. The World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others have documented a rapid rise in the scale, intensity, frequency and duration of extreme-heat events,” Guterres said.