Hottest days ever recorded on earth this week
Climate scientists stunned; 2023 could be planet's hottest year on record
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
The earth is running a sudden unexplained fever.
The global average temperature this week spiked to the hottest level on record according to multiple datasets. Both the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (graphic above) show record daily global temperatures this week.
The earth’s daily average temperature reached 62.9 degrees. That’s the highest ever recorded on current local datasets dating back to at least 1979, and may be the highest daily temperature in around 125,000 years on earth.
The strong of astounding records is eye-catching to climate scientists and observers. The temperature hit 104 degrees in Beijing this week. Temperatures in the 90s are observed as far north as Siberia and along the Arctic Ocean in northern Quebec.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
And records are being broken by wide margins. Here’s a clip from the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang on the extreme heat.
It’s not just that records are being broken — but the massive margins with which conditions are surpassing previous extremes, scientists note. In parts of the North Atlantic, temperatures are running as high as 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the warmest observed there in more than 170 years. The warm waters helped northwestern Europe, including the United Kingdom, clinch its warmest June on record.
New data the Copernicus center published Thursday showed global surface air temperatures were 0.53 degrees Celsius (0.95 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1991-2020 average in June. That was more than a tenth of a degree Celsius above the previous record, “a substantial margin,” the center said.
Canada and Minnesota set records too
Minnesota has been riding the southern edge of a record warm weather pattern through May and June. It was the warmest May and June across Canada on record. That record warmth spread into parts of northern Minnesota.
The Twin Cities just wrapped up our third warmest and second driest June on record.
Recording less than an inch of rainfall in June in Minnesota is hard to do. June is the wettest month of the year climatologically in Minnesota.
The Twin Cities averages around 4.5 inches of rain in June, so our rainfall deficit at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was about 3.5 inches just last month.
2023 hottest year on record globally?
The recent widespread record warmth is increasing the odds of 2023 going down as the warmest year on record globally.
There is now a 54 percent chance that this will be the warmest year on record globally, according to scientist Robert Rohde at the University of California, Berkeley. The rapidly developing El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean may be adding to the ongoing global warming effect.
We could see more global records this month.
Stay tuned.