This global record is not quite the type regularly used by gold-standard climate measurement entities like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. But it is an indication that climate change is reaching into uncharted territory. It legitimately captures global-scale heating and NOAA will take these figures into consideration when it does its official record calculations, said Deke Arndt, director of the National Center for Environmental Information, a division of NOAA.
But Arndt added that we wouldn't be seeing anywhere near record-warm days unless we were in “a warm piece of what will likely be a very warm era" driven by greenhouse gas emissions and the onset of a “robust” El Nino. An El Nino is a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide and generally makes the planet hotter.
On Tuesday, American independence day, Earth average temperature spiked at 17.18 degrees Celsius or 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the University of Maine's, a common tool often used by climate scientists for a good glimpse of the world's condition. Tuesday's temperature was nearly a full degree Celsius warmer than the 1979-2000 average, which is itself is warmer than the 20th and 19th century averages.
"A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations.In the U.S.