On Sunday, Earth experienced its hottest day ever recorded in human history, according to the European climate service Copernicus. That record was then broken the very next day, underlining the troubling trajectory global temperatures have taken in the last several years.
The European Union's Copernicus satellite produced preliminary data showing the global average temperature was 17.15º Celsius (62.87º Fahrenheit) on Monday; it had been a mere 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit) cooler on Sunday, which still broke the previous record set last year.
In a statement to the Associated Press, former head of U.N. climate negotiations Christiana Figueres said humanity will "scorch and fry” if the world does not implement "targeted national policies have to enable that transformation.”
As humans continue to burn fossil fuels, we release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide that trap heat that would otherwise radiate back out of the planet's atmosphere. Over time this global heating pushes the planet past its limits, creating the conditions which are cooking us like never before. In fact, the last 13 months straight have been the hottest in recorded human history, which is making Earth's weather more "weird." By the end of of 2023, climate change had broken records for hottest summer, global surface temperatures, ocean heat content and ice melt.
The first two months of 2024 were also the hottest on record, and after more temperature records were broken in April, Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess said in a statement that although the Paris climate accord threshold has not been breached, "the reality is that we’re extraordinarily close, and already on borrowed time." The Paris climate accord estimates that humans should keep global temperatures to under 1.5º Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avoid serious long-term damage to our planet.
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