Last Sunday was Earth's hottest day in all recorded history, European climate agency says

WASHINGTON (AP) — On Sunday, the Earth sizzled to the hottest day ever measured by humans, yet another heat record shattered in the past couple of years, according to the European climate service Copernicus Tuesday.

Copernicus’ preliminary data shows that the global average temperature Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), beating the record set just last year on July 6, 2023 by .01 degrees Celsius (.02 degrees Fahrenheit). Both Sunday’s mark and last year’s record obliterate the previous record of 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), which itself was only a few years old, set in 2016.

Without human-caused climate change, records would be broken nowhere near as frequently, and new cold records would be set as often as hot ones.

“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Copernius Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “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.”

While 2024 has been extremely warm, what kicked Sunday into new territory was a way toastier than usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same thing was happening on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.

But it wasn’t just a warmer Antarctica on Sunday. Interior California baked with triple digit heat Fahrenheit, complicating more than two dozen fires in the U.S. West. At the same time, Europe sweltered through its own deadly heat wave.

“It’s certainly a worrying sign coming on the heels of 13 straight record -setting months,” said Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who now estimates there’s a 92% chance that 2024 will beat 2023 as the warmest year on record.

July is generally the hottest month of the year globally, mostly because there is more land in the Northern hemisphere, so seasonal patterns there drive global temperatures.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments go back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, taking