World breaks heat record for second consecutive day – 7/5/2023 – Environment

The extreme heat reached a new record this Tuesday (4), reaching 17.18°C. It was the second mark hit in two days: on Monday (3), the average global temperature had reached 17.01°C, surpassing the highest index recorded by scientists so far, in 2016.

Data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction of the United States, linked to the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), indicate that the anomaly (that is, how much the temperature recorded deviates from the historical pattern for this day) reached 0, 98°C.

The blame for the high temperatures seen not only these days, but over the last few weeks, are considered the sum of two factors: climate change caused by human action and the onset of El Niño, a phenomenon characterized by the warming of the waters of the Pacific, near of the equator line.

The average global temperature is driven by the summer in the northern hemisphere, which began at the end of June and runs until the end of August. Thus, it is possible that this type of situation will be repeated until the end of the season.

On the 15th, the European observation service Copernicus pointed out that the beginning of June was the hottest on record and that the record was surpassed by a “substantial margin”. The index was preceded by a month of May in which the ocean surface temperature was also a record.

Physicist Paulo Artaxo, a professor at USP and one of the members of the IPCC, the United Nations Organization’s International Panel on Climate Change, explains that numbers like these point to a more severe summer than expected.

“The alert about the month of June being the hottest of the entire time series shows a medium and long-term trend”, he says. “Very likely the summer in the northern hemisphere will be hotter than expected.”

The scientist adds that this should also trigger an alert for Brazil.

“Brazil is very vulnerable to climate change, particularly because it is located in a tropical region — that is, it is already in the hottest areas of the planet. It is one thing to increase 3°C or 4°C [na média de temperatura] in Brazil and another 3°C or 4°C in Sweden. Our vulnerability is much greater”, he says, referring to the scenarios of more accentuated warming outlined by the IPCC.

Extreme heat around the world

The southern United States has suffered in recent weeks with a heat dome, the name given to the phenomenon that occurs when the atmosphere retains hot air and forms a kind of cap in a given region.

In China, a persistent heat wave has led to temperatures above 35°C, and North Africa has seen nearly 50°C.

Even Antarctica in winter has seen unusually high temperatures this year. Ukraine’s Vernadsky research base in the Argentine islands recently broke its July temperature record of 8.7°C.