Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, , as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.

Provisional published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous dayB次元官网网址檚 record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).

Climate scientists say itB次元官网网址檚 plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.

But itB次元官网网址檚 a difficult determination to make, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, because data from tree-rings, corals and ice cores donB次元官网网址檛 go that far back globally.

The temperature rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate.

B次元官网网址淲e are in an age where weather and climate records are frequently stretched beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in insurmountable loss of lives and livelihoods,B次元官网网址� Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

B次元官网网址淒eaths from high temperatures show how catastrophic it is not to take stronger action on cutting CO2,B次元官网网址� which is the main heat-trapping gas, Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said in an email.

CopernicusB次元官网网址� preliminary data shows the global average temperature Monday was 17.15 degrees Celsius (62.87 degrees Fahrenheit). The previous record before this week was set just a year ago. Before last year, the previous recorded hottest day was in 2016 when average temperatures were at 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit).

While 2024 has been extremely warm, what kicked this week into new territory was a warmer-than-usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same thing happened on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments go back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, taking those into consideration along with tree rings and ice cores, say last yearB次元官网网址檚 record highs were the . Now the first six months of 2024 have broken even those.

Without , scientists say that extreme temperature records would not be broken nearly as frequently as is happening in recent years.

Former head of U.N. climate negotiations Christiana Figueres said B次元官网网址渨e all scorch and fryB次元官网网址� if the world doesnB次元官网网址檛 immediately change course, B次元官网网址渂ut targeted national policies have to enable that transformation.B次元官网网址�

Scientists said it was B次元官网网址渆xtraordinaryB次元官网网址� that such warm days have now occurred in two consecutive years especially when the natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean . B次元官网网址淭his is yet another illustration of just how much the EarthB次元官网网址檚 climate has warmed,B次元官网网址� said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles.

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