July is set to be the hottest month ever recorded, according to some scientists.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an organisation affiliated to the European Commission which tracks climate change, the hottest ever day (in terms of the global temperature recorded across the globe) was on 6 July. It also claimed that 22 of the other hottest-ever days were recorded last month.
Dr Karsten Haustein, of the University of Leipzig, said in a statement: ‘Not only will it be the warmest July, but the warmest month ever in terms of absolute global mean temperature. We may have to go back thousands if not tens of thousands of years to find similarly warm conditions on our planet.’
UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said that Earth was no longer in a global ‘warming’ phase, but was rather in a global ‘boiling’ phase.