Climate change is driving up global temperatures, increasing the frequency and intensity of natural disasters (Picture: Getty/PA)
Data from a US climate agency has identified yesterday as the hottest day ever recorded, with the average global temperature topping 17C for the first time.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) takes data collected from two metres above the planet’s surface at points all around the world to form its picture.
Previously, the highest average temperature it had recorded was 16.92C in August 2016 and July 2022 – but the figure for July 3 reached 17.01C.
Robert Rohde, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New Scientist he was confident the temperature was the highest ever since instrumental measurements began.
He said the effects of El Niño, a phenomenon that heats up the Eastern Pacific Ocean, were combining with climate change to drive the figure higher.
Dr Rohde said: ‘We will keep passing these thresholds every few years if we have El Niño variability on top of global warming, until we get global warming under control.’
While the NOAA dataset, compiled by the University of Maine, only goes back to 1979, it is comparable with data that has been recorded much further back into the past.
The news from NOAA comes after the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced the global-mean temperature breached 1.5C above pre-industrial temperature in the first week in June.
The thick black line in this graph from the University of Maine shows the average temperatures collected for 2023 (Picture: Climate Reanalyzer)
That figure, adopted by governments around the world as part of the Paris Agreement, marks the threshold that scientists warn would cause catastrophic consequences for the planet if it is passed for a sustained period of time.
Experts suggest that, if warming continues at today’s pace, the limit is likely to be reached at some point between 2030 and the early 2050s.
The global ocean is also hotter than ever, hitting a new record temperature of 21.1C in April.
In the UK, the Met Office announced yesterday that June this year was the hottest on record.
The average mean temperature across the country for the month was 15.8C, the highest since records started to be kept in 1884.
The previous top three Junes had been separated by 0.1C, the Met Office said – but 2023 beat the previous record by an astonishing 0.9C.
The average global temperature passed 17C for the first time in recorded history on July 3.