Berlin, July 23 (EFE).- Earth beat the record for its warmest day since at least 1940 on Sunday, when the global average surface air temperature reached 17.09ºC, according to preliminary data reported Tuesday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
“Based on preliminary data released by C3S on 23 July, Sunday 21 July was the hottest day since at least 1940, by a small margin of 0.01ºC,” the service said in a press release in which it explained that while the record is only slightly above the previous record of 17.08°C from July 6, 2023, “what really stands out is the difference between the temperatures since July 2023 and all previous years.”
Before that date, the previous global daily average temperature record was 16.8°C, set on Aug. 13, 2016, but “since July 3, 2023, there have been 57 days that have exceeded that previous record.”
“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,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
The EU agency added that another sign of the global warming trend is the fact that the ten years with the highest average daily temperatures are the last ten years, from 2015 to 2024.
Earth’s average temperature tends to peak during the northern hemisphere summer because of the large land masses of the northern hemisphere, which can warm up faster than the oceans of the southern hemisphere can cool down.
However, the Copernicus service suggested that the sudden rise in global daily average temperature is related to much above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica. EFE
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