Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history

Copernicus’ preliminary data shows that the global average temperature on Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), surpassing the previous record set on July 6, 2023, by 0.01 degrees Celsius (0.02 degrees Fahrenheit). Both Sunday’s temperature and last year’s record significantly exceeded the former record of 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), set in 2016.

Without human-caused climate change, records would not be broken as frequently, and cold records would be set as often as hot ones.

“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “We are now in truly uncharted territory, and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”

While 2024 has been extremely warm, Sunday’s new record was driven by an unusually warm Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same phenomenon occurred on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.

But it wasn’t just a warmer Antarctica on Sunday. Interior California baked with triple-digit heat Fahrenheit, complicating more than two dozen fires in the U.S. West. At the same time, Europe sweltered through its own deadly heat wave.

“It’s certainly a worrying sign coming on the heels of 13 straight record-setting months,” said Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who now estimates there’s a 92% chance that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record.

July is generally the hottest month of the year globally, mostly because there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere, so seasonal patterns there drive global temperatures.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments date back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, considering these records along with tree rings and ice cores, say last year’s record highs were the hottest the planet has been in about 120,000 years. Now, the first six months of 2024 have broken even those records.

Scientists attribute the supercharged heat mainly to climate change from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, and livestock agriculture. Other contributing factors include a natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean, which has since ended. Reduced marine fuel pollution and possibly an undersea volcanic eruption are also causing some additional warmth, but these are not as significant as greenhouse gases trapping heat, they said.