World record broken again: Monday hottest day ever

The global average surface temperature rose to 17.15 degrees Celsius, 0.06 degrees higher than Sunday’s record of 17.09 degrees, according to the Climate Change Service.

• To the article: Heat record: It has never been hotter than on Sunday

The previous record was 17.08 degrees Celsius on July 6, 2023. Before that, the record for the global daily average temperature was 16.8 degrees Celsius on August 13, 2016. However, since July 3, 2023, there have been 57 days on which the 2016 record was exceeded, spread over the months of July and August 2023 and June and July 2024, it said.

“Last Monday may have set a new world record for the warmest absolute global average temperature ever – and by that I mean going back tens of thousands of years,” said climate researcher Karsten Haustein of the University of Leipzig in Germany. The record was last set on four consecutive days in early July 2023. Before that, the hottest day was in August 2016.

Above-average temperatures in Antarctica

Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement: “We are now in unexplored territory and as the climate continues to warm, we are sure to see new records broken in the coming months and years.”

According to Copernicus, the sudden increase in the daily global average temperature is linked to well above average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica. In addition, the extent of Antarctic sea ice is almost as small as it was at this time last year. This leads to well above average temperatures over parts of the Southern Ocean.

The European Union’s Copernicus climate change service regularly publishes data on the temperature at the Earth’s surface, sea ice cover and precipitation. The findings are based on computer-generated analyses that incorporate billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world. The data used goes back to 1950, and some earlier data is also available.