Graph shows steep rise in global temperature as July set to be 'hottest month ever recorded'

July 2023 is on track to be the hottest month ever recorded, and may be the hottest month in the last 120,000 years, according to climate scientists.

Temperature readings of the air and sea as well as losses of Antarctic sea ice have all smashed previous records this summer, manifesting in relentlessly extreme heatwaves and wildfires around the world.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and Copernicus, the European Union’s climate watchers, said this July will be the hottest “by a significant margin” despite looking at data from only the first three weeks.

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Not only were those weeks the hottest such period on record but they have been so far above the previous monthly all-time high – an average of 16.95C compared with 16.63C throughout July 2019 – that scientists are “virtually certain” of seeing the monthly record smashed this year.

July 6 was the hottest day ever recorded, with a global mean temperature of 17.08C, and of the 30 hottest days ever recorded, 21 of them have been during this month.

Dr Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist from Leipzig University who ran a separate reanalysis of the data, said given that the last time global temperatures were this high was 120,000 years ago, there is a “decent chance” of this July being the hottest month on Earth since then.

A graph released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service shows the steep increase in the average global temperature of July over the past eight decades.

It is still too early to know how many people have died as a result of the extreme heat experienced across large parts of North America, Asia and Europe, but it is probably thousands, said Dr