"People are going to die and those deaths are preventable", said one public health expert.
ADVERTISEMENTMonday marked the hottest day ever on Earth. The second hottest day? The day before. Heat records have never tumbled at such speed before and it could have dire consequences for people everywhere, especially Europe which is the fastest warming continent on Earth.
The EU's climate service Copernicus calculated that the global average temperature on Monday was 17.16 Celsius, narrowly topping the previous record set just a day before when it was 17.09 C. Tuesday was then 17.15 C.
All of these temperatures beat the record set just last year on 6 July by 0.01°C. All of these obliterate the previous record of 16.8°C, which itself was only a few years old, set in 2016.
The Earth would not be heating up so fast if fossil fuels were not being burned at such a rate, leading to human-caused global warming.
'Heat is a killer'
“The steady drumbeat of hottest-day-ever records and near-records is concerning for three main reasons. The first is that heat is a killer.
The second is that the health impacts of heat waves become much more serious when events persist.
The third is that the hottest-day records this year are a surprise,” says Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field.
Field said high temperatures usually occur during El Niño years - a natural warming of the equatorial Pacific that triggers weather extremes across the globe - but the last El Niño ended in April.
Field said these high temperatures “underscores the seriousness of the climate crisis."
“This has been, I mean, probably the shortest-lived record ever,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said Wednesday, after his agency calculated that Monday had beaten Sunday’s mark. And he predicted that mark would also quickly fall. “We are in uncharted territory.”
Previous record has been beaten 59 times in 13 months
Before 3 July 2023, the hottest day measured by Copernicus was 16.8 C on 13 August, 2016. In the last 13 months that mark has now been beaten 59 times, according to Copernicus.
Humanity is now “operating in a world that is already much warmer than it was before,” Buontempo said.
“Unfortunately people are going to die and those deaths are preventable,” said Kristie Ebi, a public health and climate professor at the University of Washington. “Heat is called the silent killer for a reason. People often don’t know they’re in trouble with heat until it’s too late.”
Most heat deaths in more than 80 years
In past heatwaves, including in 2021 in the Pacific Northwest, heat deaths didn’t start piling up until day two, Ebi said.
“At some point, the accumulated heat internally becomes too much, then your cells and your organs start to warm up,” Ebi said.
ADVERTISEMENTLast year, the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The death certificates of more than 2,300 people mentioned excessive heat.
Earlier this year, India witnessed prolonged heatwaves that resulted in the death of at least a 100 people. However, health experts say heat deaths are likely undercounted in India and potentially other countries.
The “big driver” of the current heat is greenhouse gas emissions, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said. Those gases help trap heat, changing the energy balance between the heat coming in from the sun and that escaping Earth, meaning the planet retains more heat energy than before, he said.
Other factors include the warming of the Pacific by El Nino; the sun reaching its peak cycle of activity; an undersea volcano explosion; and air with fewer heat-reflecting particles because of marine fuel pollution regulations, experts said.
ADVERTISEMENTThe last 13 months have all set heat records. The world’s oceans broke heat records for 15 months in a row and that water heat, along with an unusually warm Antarctica, are helping push temperatures to record level, Buontempo said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see Thursday, Friday and Saturday also set new warmest day records,” said climate scientist Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada, which has been broiling in the warmth.
