The hottest day ever

The average global air temperature over the last two days appears to be the hottest on record, going back to 1979, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

On July 4, the global average temperature was estimated to be 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NOAA climate models. That’s about half a degree Fahrenheit higher than the previous daily record set on August 14, 2016. And while an average temperature in the 60s may sound low, the daily global temperature estimate includes the entire planet, including Antarctica.

Zoom out a little bit more, and June 2023 may have been the hottest June on a longer record, going back to the late 1800s, according to preliminary global data from NOAA and a major European climate model. June 2023 was more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than average global temperatures in June in the late 1800s.

The reason for the scorching temperatures is twofold: human-caused climate change plus the cyclic climate pattern known as El Niño. El Niño is a natural pattern that began in June, and leads to extra-hot water in the Pacific. That has cascading effects around the globe, causing more severe weather in many places and higher average temperatures worldwide.

That’s why heat records tend to fall during El Niño, including when the last daily global average temperature record was set in 2016. Climate change, which is caused by humans burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. exacerbates the effects of the natural climate pattern.

While broken records are powerful reminders of the dramatic changes humans are bringing to bear on the Earth’s atmosphere, the long-term trend is what really matters for the health and well-being of people around the world. The effects of the hottest day, week or month pale in comparison to the implications of decades of steady warming, which are wreaking havoc on the entire planet.

That trend is clear. The last 8 years were the hottest ever recorded. One of the next five years will almost certainly be the hottest ever recorded, and the period from 2023 to 2027 will be the hottest on record, according to forecasters from the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Met Office.

Looking back over the last 35 years, when the debate about climate change first began to really heat up, the right wing noise machine has moved through a series of stylized positions.

(1) Global warming is a myth. It either isn’t happening at all, or it’s purely a product of natural variation in the climate.

(2) Climate change is happening, but human activity has little or nothing to do with it, and it isn’t a big deal anyway (don’t people hate winter after all?)

(3) Climate change is happening, and human activity is playing a role, but any government intervention in The Market will just make things worse. Don’t you want the Third World to develop you racist?

(4) Climate change is happening, trillions of dollars are going to be spent trying to do something about it over the next few decades, and as much of this money as possible needs to fall into the hands of the very same corporations that have profited from causing the change in the first place.

What’s interesting is that in the rest of the developed world right wing parties have pretty much moved into stage (4), but the “mainstream” right wing party in America has been so radicalized that we’re still bouncing around between (1) and (3).