“Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever, beating a record set the day before, as countries across the globe from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.

Why this matters:
“Without human-caused climate change, records would be broken nowhere near as frequently, and new cold records would be set as often as hot ones. Copernicus’ preliminary data show the global average temperature Monday was 17.15 degrees Celsius, or 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit. The first six months of 2024 have even broken the record highs from last year, which Copernicus records had noted as the hottest the planet had been in about 120,000 years.”

“Climate scientists say the world is now as warm as it was 125,000 years ago because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.

“The temperature rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate.”
Source: https://apnews.com/article/hottest-day-ever-climate-change-weather-heat-extreme-global-warming-8e2b0b7fa0360ecb931ca333a832c694