Tuesday, July 4, was the hottest day on Earth in 44-year records.

Tuesday was the warmest day on Earth since records began in 1979, with a global average temperature of 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius), according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The Washington Post reports this today.

Global temperatures have been rising for years due to human-induced climate change, but Tuesday’s sweltering temperatures were also brought on by the first El Niño weather pattern since 2018-2019.

Although measurements began in 1979, scientists can estimate average temperatures going back tens of thousands of years using instrument-based global temperature records, tree rings and ice cores, climate scientist Paulo Ceppi told the Washington Post.

So they estimate that the record was broken on Tuesday for the second consecutive day in a whopping 125,000 years, when the return of the El Niño weather pattern collided with skyrocketing early summer temperatures, the researchers say.

The Global average temperature on Tuesday reached 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.92 degrees Fahrenheit), data from the University of Maine Institute of Climate Change showed, the highest ever recorded in a single day of a year.

The same record was broken the previous day, when temperatures reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 3, surpassing the previous record for hottest day of 16.92 degrees Celsius, held by a tie of two dates, July 24, 2022 and August 14, 2016, according to data from the University of Maine and the U.S. Centers for Environmental Prediction.

The return of the El Niño event

El Niño has just started and is normally associated with a rise in global temperatures.

The The United Nations World Meteorological Organization warned on Tuesday that billions of people would be affected if El Niño brings warmer sea temperatures. and unleashes extreme heat, both in the ocean and on land.

This phenomenon will continue throughout the year with an intensity that should be “at least moderate”, the UN said when announcing the start of the episode.

The United States Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) already announced the official start of El Niño on June 8warned that “it could generate new temperature records” in certain regions.

An El Niño event weakens the trade winds and pushes warm water toward America’s west coast, the National Ocean Service says, causing areas of the northern U.S. and Canada to become drier and warmer than usual. The U.S. Gulf Coast and Southeast are experiencing wetter-than-normal weather and flooding has increased.

El Niño is expected to raise global temperatures over the next nine to 12 months, the WMO predicted.

Ecuador ‘observes’

Ecuador is being observed and perspectives on the El Niño phenomenon are maintainedsaid the ship’s captain Carlos Zapata, director of the Oceanographic and Antarctic Institute of the Navy (Inocar). “What the WMO is saying is that it’s most likely a moderate El Niño because the atmosphere hasn’t joined yet. That’s why it’s important to continue to monitor the state of the ocean and atmosphere,” Zapata said.

El Niño occurs on average every two to seven years and usually lasts between nine and twelve months.

It is a natural climate phenomenon associated with the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. But the current episode “nevertheless falls within the context of a climate modified by human activities,” according to the WMO.

Warmer next year

The return of the El Niño weather pattern for the first time in four years means more extreme weather and an acceleration in global warming, which would bring more heat records in the coming year. A WMO report released in May predicted a 98% chance that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

In parts of southern Latin America, the southern United States, the Horn of Africa, and central Asia, El Niño is associated with increased precipitation. And it could cause droughts in Australia, Indonesia and parts of Southeast Asia and Central America.

Instead, the warm water could feed hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific and slow the formation of these cyclones in the Atlantic.

The effects on global temperatures are usually noticed in the year following the development of the phenomenon.

“The arrival of El Niño will significantly increase the chance of breaking temperature records and cause more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the oceans,” warned Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

With this phenomenon in mind, the organization predicted in May that at least one of the next five years, and the five years between 2023 and 2027 as a whole, would be the hottest on record.