July was the world's warmest month in recorded history, and $1 billion weather disasters continue to mount

With extreme heat waves roasting the planet on nearly every continent, July easily set a record for the warmest month on land in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

“The global average temperature for July 2023 is confirmed to be the highest on record for any month,” the WMO said in a statement on Tuesday. “The month was 0.72°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average for July, and 0.33°C warmer than the previous warmest month, July 2019.”

During that especially hot month, four out of every five human beings experienced at least one day of abnormally hot temperatures, according to a report by Climate Central, a consortium of scientists and journalists.

“News of the warmest month on record perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise,” Chris Hewitt, WMO’s director of climate services, said at a U.N. media briefing on Tuesday, adding, “As we continue to see continued increases in concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, this long-term warming will continue and temperature records will continue to be broken.”

In the U.S., 17 states had their warmest July on record this year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but 2023 ranked as the 11th warmest July for the country as a whole since records began being kept in 1894 because of cooler than average temperatures for the month in the central and northern Plains and the Upper Midwest.

Record ocean surface temperatures

July also set a new record for the warmest month in recorded history for ocean surface temperatures, according to WMO.

“For the month as a whole, global average sea surface temperatures were 0.51°C above the 1991-2020 average,” WMO said in a press release.

In Florida, temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have exceeded 100°F for multiple days in a row, triggering coral bleaching.

Warmer-than-average ocean temperatures continue to be recorded from the Arctic to Antarctica, where winter sea ice has fallen to a record low as the planet has continued to warm due to the burning of fossil fuels.

"We just witnessed global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures set new all-time records in July,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events.”

$1 billion weather disasters pile up

In the U.S., some of the “dire consequences” of fast-rising global temperatures have included a growing number of $1-billion weather disasters.

“There have been 15 individual weather and climate disaster events confirmed for January through July 2023, each with losses exceeding $1 billion,” the NOAA said on Tuesday in a press release. “This is the highest number of billion-dollar disasters ever recorded for the first seven months of a year since NOAA began tracking these events in 1980.”

Steady drumbeat of falling high temperature records

While climate change skeptics often respond to news of summertime high temperature records with shrugs and quips like, “It’s called summer,” all-time heat records have been set this year during wintertime as well. That’s happened in July and August in South America, where a heat dome formed over Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, smashing many temperature records.

For the past few decades, the number of high-temperature records being set around the world has far outpaced the number of cold temperature records being set. This summer has pushed that dynamic to a new level, with global surface temperatures hitting new daily records 36 consecutive days and ocean surface temperatures being set 150 days in a row.