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July 2019 was the Hottest Month in Recorded History

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Video Clip / Associated Press/Caspar Haarløv Into the Ice

According the the Copernicus Climate Change Service, part of the Copernicus Earth Observation Program, of the European Untion, July was the hottest month in recorded human history.

The calculation of the average global temperature was arrived at by measuring data from satellites, buoys, weather balloons and various other sources, daily and hourly, and then inputting that information into proprietary computer models.

Photo / The Copernicus Program

Next, the results were compared with other measurements taken by various similar climate research agencies around the world.

In case you are wondering, more modern and accurate global average temperature records have been kept for approximately 100 years. General record keeping goes back much further, for example, the recent heatwave in Europe broke high temperature marks dating to the 1500s, according to the Climatology Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

The warmest previous July in history was in 2016 and global average temperatures in July this year were at least as high, if not higher. Northern latitudes had particularly high temps, compared to the average from 1981-2010 including, Alaska, Baffing Island, parts of Siberia, and also, Iran as well as large parts of Antarctica.

Photo / Adobe Stock

Extreme Measures During Euro-Heatwave Required:

Heat across Europe was extreme and caused disruption and dismay during it’s recent severe heatwaves, in June and again in July.

It got so hot in Antwerp, Belgium, for example, that 2 suspected drug smugglers called the police to rescue them, after they accidentally locked themselves into a scorching hot shipping container, which also happened to be filled with cocaine.

Better than death by frying, apparently.

In areas of Germany, known for it’s stretches of autobahn without speed limits, limits were put in place, for the first time, in order to prevent cars from overheating and even damaging the roads themselves, while operating at high speeds.

In the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium, bears were fed watermelons encased in blocks of ice, to keep them from potentially suffering heatstroke.

A wildfire burns in western Greenland on July 31, 2019. (Photo Credit / Orla Joelsen via Twitter)

Ice on Fire: This is Real

Arctic wildfires; yes, wildfires where there was once nothing but snow and ice, struck again. Again, that is, after a series of fires were reported in western Greenland in 2017.

Over 100 intense wildfires in the Arctic Circle were tracked by CAMS, part of the Copernicus program mentioned above, during June and July, 2019.

In June the fires caused 50 megatons of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere, as much as the total yearly emissions for Sweden. Shortly thereafter in July, during the European heatwave, melting ice, also in Greenland, sent 197 billion tons of water into the Atlantic.

They call this a “melt event” and this summer there have been several of the largest on record, since at least 1950. Not because there was more melting in 1950, but because records have only been kept since that year.

The (Hopefully) Long Road to Redemption

It may well take years of these “melt events” to combine together and raise the world sea level, and endanger coastal cities around the globe, but if it is happening at all, that is alarming, in and of itself.

Since these kinds of ice melt events, such as we experienced this year, and a previous extreme event in 2012, are thought to occur only approximately every 250 years, therefore, already having seen two in less than a decade is a strong indicator that climate change is increasing the frequency of these, and many other anomalous weather patterns.

BBC Interactive Tool Showing Global Warming Status by Location


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