Scientists from global climate organizations have reported before July has even ended that this month will likely be Earth’s hottest on record by far. The heat in July has been so intense that it is “virtually certain” that it will break records by a large margin, the World Meteorological Organization and the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

It’s getting hot in here

Overall, the average air temperature across the world for the first 23 days of July averaged 16.95 degrees celsius, above the previous record of 16.63 degrees set in July 2019, the report showed. While the climate historic data only goes back to 1940, scientists are highly confident these temperatures are the warmest the planet has seen in 120,000 years.

July also had the highest daily global mean surface air temperatures on record, reaching 17.08 degrees Celsius on 6th July. This was within 0.01°C of the values recorded on the 5th and 7th of July. As seen in the chart below, all days since July 3 have been hotter than the previous record of 16.80°C established on August 13, 2016.

With heat waves affecting North America, Europe, and Asia, the researchers said the record temperature in July was inevitable. In the US, over 170 million are under heat alerts this week. In China, temperatures exceeded 52 degrees Celsius, while southern Europe is also dealing with a heatwave, especially affecting Italy, Spain and Greece.

“Record-breaking temperatures are part of the trend of drastic increases in global temperatures. Anthropogenic emissions are ultimately the main driver of these rising temperatures,” Carlo Bountempo, head of Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), said in a media statement. “July’s record is unlikely to remain isolated this year.”

Climate breakdown

Weather records aren’t usually calculated until a week or longer after a month’s end. But the heat has been so intense in July that climate scientists are confident about this month being the hottest in the world’s history. Twenty-one of the first 23 days of July were hotter than any previous days in the database, Bountempo said, speaking with AP.

In line with the report, Karsten Haustein, a researcher at Leipzig University, found the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter in July than the average temperature for July before industrialization. He took global temperature estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and found July is likely to break the 2019 record by 0.2 °C.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the US nonprofit Berkeley Earth, estimated the record would be broken by closer to 0.3 °C. He used tools from Japanese and European meteorologists. “Barring a major asteroid impact today, it is virtually certain that July 2023 will be the warmest month on record by a large margin,” he told The Guardian.

Reacting to the news, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the era of global warming has ended and the “era of global boiling” has started. “For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster,” said Guterres in a speech at the UN headquarters in New York City.

The planet is facing alarming records that will likely continue to be broken as the climate crisis kicks in. The World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists, found this week the heatwaves that affected North America, Europe, and China in July would have been extremely unlikely without man-made climate change.