Hottest day on Earth on record? Already beaten. The meteorologist: “It will happen more and more”

It doesn’t take time to write that July 3 was the hottest day on Earth that the record has already been surpassed. Now the hottest one, such as global average temperatures, is disputed between the July 4th and July 5th: in both, according to Climate Reanalyzer of the Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine, an average temperature of 17.18°C. On the other hand, last Monday, the first day of records, the average was 17.01°Cthus exceeding the previous peak of August 2016 (16.92°C).

The point is, as the scientists remind us, that for the combination of growing emissions and the climate crisis with the effects of El Niño it is very likely that these records will be broken day after day.

As told by the climate physicist of the Cnr, Antonello Pasini“relying on just one day sometimes risks being an understatement, but with the fact that El Niño is growing we should expect new records in the near future. The upward trend in global average temperature is obviously due to human actions such as gas emissions greenhouse, but cycles of natural variability such as El Niño are now superimposed on this. In 2024, globally, we will still see several new records. Until now we had La Niña, a sort of “tachipirina” for Earth fever: now that is gone we must prepare and adapt to an increasingly extreme climate”.

The data shown by Climate Reanalyzer (which can be consulted here) are based on NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sources and are “based on reanalysis data, they are serious and reported but being reanalysis they are not perfectly consistent with the observed: they provide a reliable idea but do not are 100% real data.In any case they show the very strong heat in progress, inevitable in the current configuration between the presence of El Niño and increasingly warmer seas due to overheating” adds the Cnr/Lamma climatologist, Julius Betti.

Records are set on global averages: if we take July 5, for example, a day today indicated together with the previous one as the “hottest ever”, we should observe the average between the coldest and other extremely hot countries. In particular, yesterday, in three different weather stations of theAlgeria 49°C was recorded, a few decimals below the historical record. In Iran it reached 50°C, in Türkiye 45. A Manila in the Philippines, it’s a record-breaking beginning of July: 37°C in this period they had never met.

If this is not enough to have an idea, as well as a Antarctica with high temperatures (around 8 degrees) and minimum quantities of ice, just look at South America where it is now the middle of winter to understand better: in theCentral Argentina there are thirty degrees, same conditions in Chile and a little less in Peruwhere around Lima the column marked +27.

The problem, scientists from all over the world remind us, is that the worst is yet to come. The effects of El Niño will be increasingly intense in the coming months and already in the coming weeks, especially in some areas of the northern hemisphere, temperatures will probably rise further.

For example, it is expected to be very hot in Spain, with peaks of even 45°C, but also in Russia (over forty) and especially in Middle East and inCentral Asia where yes it could even reach 53°C.

More than the “hottest day on Earth” we should therefore seriously think about the fact that 2023 is already a candidate – and 2024 will certainly do so – to be among the hottest ever. Taking into account that the last eight years are already considered among the hottest in history, the trend therefore only gets worse. Against the effects of the natural phenomenon of El Niño we can do little, but much is in our hands to reverse the course of human overheating, starting with a necessary “immediate decarbonization” the IPCC scientists once again remind us.