July set to become world’s hottest month on record: What happened?

 July 2023 has broken global temperature records, raising fears about what patterns could next emerge.

By Inam ullah

Published On 31 Jul 202331 Jul 2023

July will likely be the world’s hottest month on record and possibly the warmest in 120,000 years, according to climate scientists.

“We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.

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It comes as heat waves sizzled large swathes of Europe, North Africa, North America and Asia.

Temperature records broken

The first three weeks of July marked the warmest period on record compared to previous averages of the first 23 days of July from 1940 to 2023.

It broke the prior record set for the full month of July in 2019 of 16.63C (61.93F) to reach 16.95C (62.51F) surface air temperature.

Temperatures in the first and third weeks also briefly rose above the 1.5C (34.7F) limit set forth in the Paris Agreement.

July 6 was the hottest day, according to ERA5 data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service with the global average temperature reaching 17.08C (62.74F).

In a joint statement the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said it was “extremely likely” July 2023 would break the record.