Earth records hottest day ever on July 3, 2023; record broken the very next day

Monday, July 3rd 2023 was the hottest day ever recorded globally with the average temperature reaching 17.01 degrees Celsius. This calculation was done by the United States National Centre for Environmental Protection’s (NCEP) climate forecast system to provide a time series of daily mean two-metre air temperature, based on readings from surface, air balloon and satellite observations. The last time this record was broken was in August 2016(16.92 degrees Celsius), also an El Nino year. New data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer Project suggests that the record set on July 3rd was broken the very next day at 17.1 degrees Celsius. The hottest day was calculated through satellite records dating back to 1979 combined with NOAA records dating all the way back to 1880. Additionally, the EU monitoring service Copernicus said in a statement that "The month was the warmest June globally at just over 0.5 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, exceeding June 2019 - the previous record - by a substantial margin,"

Heat from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is only being compounded by the El Nino phenomenon which arrived this year.

This record is contextualised by several heat records being broken across the world, like the UK for instance which experienced the hottest June on record. In the US, heat advisories were issued as several states crossed 37.7 degrees Celsius. Beijing reported 10 straight days of temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius which was interrupted by floods that displaced thousands. During the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, temperatures reached 48 degrees Celsius as over 2000 people reported heat stress. Ukraine’s Vernadsky Research Base in Antarctica recently broke its July record with 8.7 degrees Celsius. North Africa has seen temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius this summer.

With worsening heatwaves and humidity, substantial increases in heat-related deaths are expected. Most people in the global south cannot afford indoor cooling and people dependent on daily wage labour must be outside for work. It is difficult to realise how many people are in lethal difficulty, especially when it does not cool down at night.

While climate scientists lend more importance to records broken over a month or year, it is important to note that in several parts of the world, temperatures have breached the Paris agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius, like Europe where temperatures were 2.3 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels in 2022. Unfortunately, July 3rd might only be the first in a series of records that might be broken this year itself.