July 2021 now takes the record of hottest month recorded on Earth. We have kept these records for 142 years; there has never been a hotter month on this planet than July 2021. July being the warmest month of the year is not unusual, but not only was 2021 the hottest July on record, it is now the hottest month on record period. "July 2021 marked the 45th consecutive July and the 439th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average," according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The Associated Press reported that the last seven Julys, from 2015 to 2021, have been the hottest seven Julys on record, according to NOAA climatologist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo. She went on to say that warming on land in western North America and in parts of Europe and Asia really drove the record-setting heat. While the worldwide temperature was barely higher than the record, what shattered it was land temperature over the Northern Hemisphere.
Credit: NOAA/NCEI
The old record for hottest month on the Earth was set in July 2016 and tied in July 2019 and July 2020. July 2021 was 0.02ºF hotter than that previous record with an average temperature of 62.07ºF. The temperature used here for comparison is the combined land and water surface temperature average for the month. That's looking at the entire globe, not just weather data from the United States. There were several spots that saw their hottest or near-hottest July locally. According to NCEI, "Asia had its hottest July on record...Europe had its second hottest...and North America, South America, Africa and Oceania all had a top-10 warmest July."
July 2021 Arctic (left) and Antarctic (right) sea ice extent maps (NOAA/NCEI)
Also worth noting Arctic sea ice extent was 18.8% below the 1981-2010 average, but the Antarctic sea ice extent was 2.6% above average and was the largest Antarctic sea ice extent during the month of July since 2015 and the eighth largest on record. The Arctic sea ice is the fourth smallest extent seen in the month of July since scientists started observing that with satellites in 1979. It has only been smaller than this in July 2012, July 2019, and July 2020. The data comes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
A map of the world plotted with some of the most significant climate events that occurred during July 2021 (NOAA/NCEI)
The tropics were also more active than what is considered average, and Hurricane Elsa was the earliest fifth named storm in the Atlantic basin. The average temperature for the month of July in Louisville was 79.7ºF which doesn't even come close to breaking the top 10 hottest list. So far this is tied as the sixth hottest year for the globe, but the global teleconnections are changing a lot right now, so a lot can still happen. If you're interested in reading more about the state of the climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last week with "the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science." The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
