TAMPA, Fla. — It wasn’t your imagination; July was stiflingly hot. NOAA said Friday, July was the hottest month ever recorded in the last 142 years.
Overall, NOAA said the combined land and ocean surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average and finished 0.02 degrees warmer than the previous hottest month on record set in July 2016 and tied in July 2019 and 2020.
“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded.”
NOAA’s report found in the Northern Hemisphere, the land-surface only temperature was the highest ever recorded in July, more than 2.7 degrees above average, easily surpassing the previous record set in 2012. Asia recorded its hottest July on record while Europe saw its second-hottest July ever.
According to ABC News, while the world set a record in July, the United States only tied for its 13th hottest July on record. Even though California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington had their hottest Julys, slightly cooler than normal months in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire kept the nation from approaching record heat levels. The last time the globe had a July cooler than the 20th century average was in 1976.
The increasing temperatures were linked to what NOAA said was the “disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set around the globe. The report also came just days after the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report on climate change.
The UN IPCC study said, “Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea-level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.”
