July is on track to become Earth’s warmest month in recorded history according to new data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) this week.

In a statement issued on Thursday, July 27, the World Meteorological Organization said that this month “is on track to be the hottest July and the hottest month on record.”

The statement references newly published data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service’s ERA5 dataset, which is generally regarded as one of, if not the leading global datasets for climate change monitoring.

According to the WMO, “the first three weeks of July have been the warmest three-week period on record.”

This historic three-week period has also featured most of our planet’s warmest days on record, according to the ERA5 data.

“According to the ERA5 dataset, the global mean surface air temperature reached its highest daily value (17.08°C) on 6th July 2023,” and “all days since 3rd July have been hotter than the previous record of 16.80°C from 13th August 2016,” says the WMO.

Image: Graph showing the top 30 warmest days on record in the ERA5 dataset, based on globally averaged surface air temperature. Source: WMO / ECMWF-C3S

This lengthy spell of record-breaking warm days has combined to push the running monthly average temperature to a never-before-seen level.

“According to the ERA5 dataset, the global mean surface air temperature averaged for the first 23 days of July 2023 was 16.95°C. This is well above the 16.63°C recorded for the full month of July 2019, which is currently the warmest July and warmest month on record,” the WMO says.

Image: Average global surface air temperature during the first 23 days of every July between 1940 and 2023, based on the ERA5 dataset, with 2023 well above the previous record from 2019. Source: WMO / ECMWF-C3S

The WMO points out that it is now “virtually certain” that this month will become Earth’s warmest July and warmest month on record, beating the previous record from July 2019 “by a significant margin”.

This record warm July follows Earth’s warmest June and equal second warmest May on record, based on ERA5 data.