The Washington Post
This July 4 was hot. Earth’s hottest day on record, in fact.
By
Leo Sands
Updated July 5, 2023 at 9:53 a.m. EDT
Tuesday was the hottest day on Earth since at least 1979, with the global average temperature reaching 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius),
according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
As a result, some scientists believe July 4 may have been one of the hottest days on Earth in about 125,000 years, due to a dangerous combination of climate change causing global temperatures to soar, the
return of the El Niño pattern and the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the United States, 57 million people were exposed to dangerous heat on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post’s
extreme heat tracker. At the same time, China was
gripped by a sizzling heat wave, the Antarctic is hotter than usual during its winter, and temperatures in the north of Africa reached 122F,
Reuters reported.