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Image: – © AFP Ishara S. KODIKARA
The planet sweltered to the unofficial hottest day in human recordkeeping on July 3 and then blasted past that with an even hotter day on July 4.
According to University of Maine scientists at the Climate Reanalyzer project, the global average temperature spiked into uncharted territory for two straight days, and the forecast for Wednesday is expected to be more of the same.
High-temperature records were surpassed on July 3 and 4 in Quebec, northwestern Canada, and Peru. According to Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to Tampa, Florida, have been hovering at all-time highs.
Beijing reported nine days last week when the temperature exceeded 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). The Antarctic is hotter than usual during its winter, and temperatures in the north of Africa reached 122F, Reuters reported.
The high-temperature readings around the globe are due to a combination of the El Niño weather event and ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide. The numbers are not arbitrary – and are actually based on data from weather stations, ships, ocean buoys, and satellites.
“The increasing heating of our planet caused by fossil fuel use is not unexpected, it was predicted already in the 19th century after all,” said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. “But it is dangerous for us humans and for the ecosystems we depend on. We need to stop it fast.”
How hot will it get?
The question is simple: Have we seen the very hottest day on Earth, yet? The answer would have to be probably not.
“When’s the hottest day likely to be? It’s going to be when global warming, El Niño, and the annual cycle all line up together. Which is the next couple months,” said Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at Oxford University, in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a triple whammy.”
Last year, according to the Washington Post, a report from a United Nations panel of 278 top climate experts warned that the planet was on track to surpass the globally agreed target of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
Beyond that threshold, scientists fear that people will not be able to adapt to climate-induced disasters such as heat waves, famines and infectious diseases.
“If we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, which is the world’s governments’ aim, we’ve got very little time to stop the warming,” Allen said. “You don’t need a climate model to know that — it’s just a matter of braking distances.”
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