Here's what July, hottest month in history, looked like
July is usually known to be the hottest month of the year, but this year it was globally the hottest of them all. As a matter of fact, the Earth may not have been this hot in the last 120,000 years.
Yakub Mia, a rickshaw puller in his forties, said he has never had a July like the one this year ever before.
During a 20-minute ride in Dhanmondi on Thursday afternoon, he was almost blinded by the beads of perspiration dripping from his forehead, as though the Sun had been following him wherever he went.
The more he wiped it off using the dampened napkin hanging from his shoulder, the more drenched he got as he kept paddling.
A man braving his daily rush hour, Mehedi Hasan, a job holder in his early thirties, said he has been having a very hard time sleeping at night amid the scorching heat and humidity.
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"Even the air coming out of the ceiling fan is warm," he said.
According to the Disaster Forum, heat stroke has claimed the lives of at least 20 individuals across the country since April, a TBS report published on 24 July reads.
Dhaka weather was recorded at 38 degrees Celsius at 3pm on 31 July, according to World Weather Online. While it is not the highest, the situation was quite dire as higher humidity took the RealFeel (perceived temperature) to 45 degrees and above in July.
July is usually known to be the hottest month of the year, but this year it was globally the hottest of them all. It broke all previous records of temperature set in 2019.
As a matter of fact, the Earth may not have been this hot in the last 120,000 years.
According to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, Earth's average temperature on 7 July was 17.23 degrees Celsius, which is already highest in the last 44 years.
Many scientists – including those at Copernicus – say it's almost certain that these temperatures are the warmest the planet has seen in 120,000 years, given what we know from millennia of climate data extracted from tree rings, coral reefs and deep-sea sediment cores.
"These are the hottest temperatures in human history," Samantha Burgess, deputy director at Copernicus told CNN.
"The era of global boiling has arrived," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during his urgent speech in New York on 27 July.
He also said, "Climate change is here. It is terrifying, and it is just the beginning."
Temperature records broken
July 2023 broke six global temperature records, according to Copernicus, the Earth Observation component of the European Union's space programme.
On 6 July, Earth's average surface temperature (global mean surface air temperature) reached its highest daily value of 17.08 degree Celsius. This was the first temperature record broken.
This value was within 0.01 degree Celsius of the values recorded on 5 and 7 July, and all days since 3 July have been hotter than the previous record of 16.8 degrees Celsius from 13 August 2016.
Meanwhile, the global mean surface air temperature averaged for the first 23 days of July 2023 was 16.95 degree Celsius. This is well above the 16.63 degrees Celsius recorded for the entire month of July 2019, which was previously the warmest July and warmest month on record.
The first three weeks of July were also the hottest three weeks on record, which is yet another record.
The three other records are global mean temperature temporarily exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold, the highest average global sea surface temperatures and new national temperature records for China.
Deadly floods in South Asia
South Asia has been hit hard by record-breaking monsoon rains after a delayed start of the monsoon season this year.
The news of death by flood in northern India started circulating on 10 July, with The New York Times reporting at least 49 deaths caused by heavy rains and flooding. The report mentioned the Himalayan state of India's Himachal Pradesh had more than 10 times its average rainfall for this time of the year.
The Guardian reported that Delhi experienced 153 mm of rain, "the highest precipitation in a single day in July in 40 years," while the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh "received a month's rainfall in a day."
Meanwhile, the cold desert region of Ladakh received more than 10,000% of its normal rain on 8-9 July, according to Down to Earth.
In an explainer in the Hindustan Times, India's meteorological authorities and climate experts both pointed to significant changes in the amount of rainfall. The term "climate change" was missing, though.
However, in the same HT explainer, India's former earth sciences secretary M Rajeevan is quoted saying, "one of the important impacts of climate change on monsoon: it rains fewer hours, but when it rains, it rains very heavily."
"This is a clear climate change signal," climate scientist and IPCC author Dr Roxy Matthew Koll told the Daily Telegraph while highlighting how the hills are "particularly susceptible to heavy rains and landslides" and that flash floods and cloudbursts are "hard to predict".
The rainfall caused Jamuna river's flood waters to touch the walls of Agra's Taj Mahal for the first time in 45 years.
On 17 July, India's Himachal Pradesh was struck by another heavy rainfall, killing 111 more, according to the Tribune.
The Kathmandu Post reported on 18 July that at least 30 have died in Nepal since the start of the monsoon, mostly in landslides and floods.
On the same day, Reuters reported floods in India's Assam killed eight and displaced more than 115,000. It also submerged crops, home and nearly half of Kaziranga National Park, a 1,090 square kilometre park that was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1985.
On 20 July, 11 workers in Pakistan's Islamabad died after a wall was "weakened by rains," reports Dawn, and 16 died in a landslide in Irshalwadi. 37 miles away from Mumbai.
Extreme heat causing wildfires
Canada experienced its worst ever start to the wildfire season — largely due to an extreme dry period followed by a heatwave — with Al Jazeera reporting that the impacts of the fires can be seen as far as Norway, while thousands of people in Canada have been displaced from their homes.
As of 17 July, there were still 907 active wildfires, of which 599 were out of control. The majority of fires have been categorized as "out of control" by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
On the same day, Toronto Star reported a record 100,000 square kilometres of land being burned by this year's wildfires.
Lebanese media outlet L'Orient Today reported a major fire on 19 July in the vicinity of Kfarhouna, near Jezzine, South Lebanon.
Greek authorities brought nearly 2,500 people on the Greek island of Corfu to safety as forest fires blazed during a major heat wave, Deutsche Welle reported on 24 July.
Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey witnessed significant numbers of wildfire incidents in July this year.
Even Antarctia feeling the heat
One of the coldest places on Earth - Antarctica - is feeling the heat of this year's temperature rise. Sea ice is currently at a record low in the Southern Hemisphere's winter - the time when ice should soon be reaching its maximum extent.
Floods and record heat in China
China has seen extreme weather in July.
According to a BBC News report citing the UK's Met Office, a weather station in the northwestern region Xinjiang provisionally recorded the temperature to be 52.5 degrees Celsius during 15-16 July, which is China's highest temperature ever.
What's next?
Reiterating the UN chief Guterres' message, "Climate change is here."
We already stepped into the terrifying era of climate change that we forecasted for a long time.
Guterres' 27 July message ultimately was not one of despair, but an urgent call for action.
"Leaders must lead," he said, and reminded that it is still possible to keep global heating from increasing at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to levels before the industrial revolution.
But to do so, the world must act immediately. The world, as a whole, needs immediate transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
"All actors must come together to accelerate a just and equitable transition from fossil fuels to renewables," Guetteres said, "as we stop oil and gas expansion and funding and licensing for new coal, oil, and gas."
