July was the hottest month across the globe ever measured, and 2019 is on track to be one of the warmest years, according to data released last by the European Union's Earth observation network.
Searing heat waves saw records tumble across Europe last month, with unusually high temperatures around the Arctic Circle as well. Wildfires unprecedented in scope and intensity burned in Siberia and Alaska, releasing more than 100 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere across June and July.
At the same time, Greenland's ice sheet shed massive amounts of melted ice daily, totalling nearly 200 billion tonnes in July alone, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
"While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally, by a very small margin," Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. "With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future."
