Heat records are falling around the world as the Earth warms rapidly

The past three days were very likely the hottest in Earth’s modern history, scientists said, as an astonishing wave of heat across the planet continued to shatter temperature records from North America to Antarctica.

The spike comes as forecasters warn that Earth is entering a multi-year period of exceptional warmth, driven by two main factors: Humans continue to burn oil, gas and coal alongside the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern, after three years.

The increase has already been drastic. Just the planet experienced the warmest June ever recordedsaid European researchers, with deadly heat waves in Texas, Mexico And India. In the North Atlantic, ocean temperatures were 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in May than normal at that time of year. Around Antarctica, sea ice levels have fallen dropped to an all-time low.

And the heat shows no signs of stopping. On Monday, global average temperatures reached 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17 degrees Celsius, the warmest day on record, according to the The University of Maine Climate Reanalyzerthat combines satellite data, observations and computer modeling to provide a real-time update of climate conditions.

But that record was shattered the next day. On Tuesday, global average temperatures rose to a new high of 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

A separate analysis by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that Tuesday the warmest day Earth has experienced since at least 1940when the records began, and very likely before that.

The planet’s overall warming is “well within the range of what scientists predicted would happen,” as humans continued to pump heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and the payments company Stripe.

But, he added, there may be other factors besides human-induced warming that have caused temperatures to rise so dramatically in recent months. For example, a cyclical phenomenon in the Pacific known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation causes year-to-year fluctuations by moving heat in and out of deeper ocean layers. Earth’s surface temperatures tend to be somewhat cooler during La Niña years and somewhat hotter during El Niño years.

“A big reason we’re seeing so many records breaking is that we’re transitioning from an unusually long three-year La Niña, which suppressed temperatures a bit, to a strong El Niño,” said Dr. Hausfather.

There may also be other dynamics at play. In January 2022, a volcanic eruption under the Pacific archipelago of Tonga blasted a huge amount of vaporized seawater into the atmosphere that could trap extra heat. Some scientists have also suggested that efforts to clean up sulfur pollution from ships and coal-fired power plants around the world could raise temperatures somewhat, as sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere tends to have a mild cooling effect. But scientists have yet to definitively untangle its role in the current heat wave.