We may have experienced rainy weather the past few days, but elsewhere, it is sizzling hot. Reports say that the Earth is experiencing record breaking hot weather based on recent official and unofficial records and actual situation on the ground.
According to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool often used by climate scientists for a good glimpse of the world’s condition, the global daily average temperature for July 3 came in at 17.01 degrees Celsius or 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s the first time in the 44 years of this dataset that the temperature surpassed the 17-degree Celsius mark.
The reanalyzer is based on a NOAA computer simulation intended for forecasts that uses satellite data. The record therefore is unofficial, and still has to be confirmed using standard climate measuring system of weather agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association of the United States.
There are however indications that July 3 was indeed a record hot weather. High temperature records were surpassed July 3 and 4 in Quebec and northwestern Canada and Peru. Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to Tampa, Florida have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Beijing reported 9 straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 35 C (95 F).
A powerful heatwave is now happening from California to Texas. Heat waves are occurring more often and more intensely in major US cities, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, with a frequency of six per year during the 2010s and 2020s compared to two per year during the 1960s.
The worst ever wildfires in Canadian history continued to burn, with an area more than the United Arab Emirates already charred. China continued to reel under a heatwave with temperatures above 35°C, and major floods hitting parts of the country. North Africa saw temperatures of 50°C. The British Isles and Nordic countries reeled under extreme marine heat waves, and even the Antarctic region broke records of previous high temperatures.
The Indian Metrological Department, said that minimum temperatures were above normal at isolated places over Odisha; at many places over Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand, Jammu-Kashmir-Ladakh-Gilgit-Baltistan-Muzaffarabad, Punjab and Chhattisgarh and also in Himachal Pradesh among other places.
In Europe, a high -pressure system is causing heatwaves in the region and has been named Cerberus – after the three-headed dog in ancient Greek mythology who guarded the gates to the underworld. Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland are all facing a major heat wave. The United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization said global temperatures recorded in early July were among the hottest on record.
And here’s an official record that came in recently: According to NASA’s global temperature analysis, June 2023 was the hottest June on record. With the onset of El Niño, it is possible that July will also be a record breaker.