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World Breaks Hottest Day Record for 2nd Day in a Row

A Cuban fisherman rests in a makeshift raft at sunset in Havana Bay on July 19, 2024. (Photo by YAMIL LAGE / AFP)
A Cuban fisherman rests in a makeshift raft at sunset in Havana Bay on July 19, 2024. (Photo by YAMIL LAGE / AFP)
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World Breaks Hottest Day Record for 2nd Day in a Row

A Cuban fisherman rests in a makeshift raft at sunset in Havana Bay on July 19, 2024. (Photo by YAMIL LAGE / AFP)
A Cuban fisherman rests in a makeshift raft at sunset in Havana Bay on July 19, 2024. (Photo by YAMIL LAGE / AFP)

The world again registered its hottest day on record on Monday, July 22, inching past Sunday which had just taken the title, according to preliminary data from a European Union monitoring agency.
As heatwaves sizzled around the world and wildfires engulfed parts of the Mediterranean, Russia and Canada, the global average surface air temperature rose to 17.15 degrees Celsius (62.87 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday. That was 0.06 C (0.11 F) higher than Sunday's record according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which has tracked such data since 1940.
This includes temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere which is currently in winter, bringing down the worldwide average.
Scientists said it was possible that Tuesday or Wednesday of this week could again surpass Monday's record, as temperature peaks generally happen in clusters, Reuters reported.
The last record hot day was in July 2023, when the daily peak was broken across four consecutive days from July 3 through 6. Before that, it was set in August 2016.
What makes this year's record unusual is that unlike in 2023 and 2016, the world in April moved out of the El Nino climate pattern which generally amplifies global temperatures owing to warmer-than-usual waters in the Eastern Pacific.
Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University in Germany, said it was remarkable that the record had been breached again now with the world well into the "neutral" phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
This points to the greater-than-ever influence of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, in boosting global temperatures.
"This past Monday might have set a new global record for warmest absolute global average temperature ever - by that I mean going back tens of thousands of years," Haustein said.

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Varieties

'Dark Oxygen' in Depths of Pacific Ocean Prompts New Theories on Life's Origins

Relicanthus sp, a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) that lives on sponge stalks attached to nodules - AFP
Relicanthus sp, a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) that lives on sponge stalks attached to nodules - AFP
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'Dark Oxygen' in Depths of Pacific Ocean Prompts New Theories on Life's Origins

Relicanthus sp, a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) that lives on sponge stalks attached to nodules - AFP
Relicanthus sp, a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) that lives on sponge stalks attached to nodules - AFP

Scientists have discovered that metallic nodules on the seafloor produce their own oxygen in the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean. These polymetallic nodules, generating electricity like AA batteries, challenge the belief that only photosynthetic organisms create oxygen, potentially altering our understanding of how life began on Earth, AFP reported.

In the total darkness of the depths of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have discovered oxygen being produced not by living organisms but by strange potato-shaped metallic lumps that give off almost as much electricity as AA batteries.

The surprise finding has many potential implications and could even require rethinking how life first began on Earth, the researchers behind a new study said on Monday.

It had been thought that only living things such as plants and algae were capable of producing oxygen via photosynthesis -- which requires sunlight.

But four kilometres (2.5 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, where no sunlight can reach, small mineral deposits called polymetallic nodules have been recorded making so-called dark oxygen for the first time.

The discovery was made in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an abyssal plain stretching between Hawaii and Mexico, where mining companies have plans to start harvesting the nodules.

The lumpy nodules -- often called "batteries in a rock" -- are rich in metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese, which are all used in batteries, smartphones, wind turbines and solar panels.

The international team of scientists sent a small vessel to the floor of the CCZ aiming to find out how mining could impact the strange and little understood animals living where no light can reach.

nodules in the CCZ next year.