July 4 Breaks Record for the Hottest Day Ever — 1 Day After the Previous Record Was Broken
Tuesday appears to have been the hottest day ever recorded on Earth — and it broke the record set just one day before
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July 4 appears to have been the hottest day ever recorded on Earth — and it broke the record set just one day before.
On Tuesday, the global average temperature hit 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. It was the hottest day recorded since temperatures began to be documented in 1979 with satellite stock recording — and it’s believed to have been one of the hottest days in at least 125,000 years, according to The Washington Post.
Related: 23 Shocking Photos of Our Planet in Danger
Monday’s global temperature average was 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest day on record before it got blasted out of the water by the next day's record-high heat. Before that, the last highest recorded temperature average was 62.46 degrees in August 2016, per the Post.
Rising temperatures amid global climate change are "a death sentence for people and ecosystems,” Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, told Bloomberg.
In a tweet, author and climate scientist Bill McGuire wrote that the record-breaking July 4 heat was "totally unprecedented and terrifying."
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The cause of the rising temperatures is climate change, as well as the return of the dramatic El Niño climate pattern after four years, according to the Washington Post.
El Niño refers to the warming of the ocean’s surface, or “above-average sea surface temperatures, in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean,” per USGS.gov.
Related: World Is 'Heading in the Wrong Direction' as Impacts of Climate Change Worsen, UN Warns
In addition to rising temperatures, El Niño's return is likely to usher in bouts of extreme weather.
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