El Nino drives back-to-back hottest days on record

The world saw its two hottest days ever recorded one after the other on Monday and Tuesday as climate change and the El Nino weather pattern looked likely to drive another scorching Northern Hemisphere summer.

Data from the United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction showed that the planet’s average temperature was 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, up from the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F), which was set in August 2016. That new record stood just on day. It was shattered on Tuesday when the average temperature rose to 17.18C (62.92F).These temperatures might not appear menacing in themselves, but they represent the mean for the entire planet, half of which — the Southern Hemisphere — is in peak winter.

Separately, the European Union’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, also known as C3S, on Thursday announced another temperature record in a year that has already seen a drought in Spain and fierce heatwaves in China and the US.

“The month was the warmest June globally at just over 0.5 degrees Celsius [0.9F] above the 1991-2020 average, exceeding June 2019 – the previous record – by a substantial margin,” the EU monitor said in a statement.

Scientists said the heat records reflect the impact of global warming, driven by greenhouse gases released from human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that continue emitting roughly 40 billion tonnes of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.