By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s official, and one for the record books.

July was the hottest month ever recorded in human history, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information..

“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”

Spinrad said that climate change has set the world on a “disturbing and disruptive path” and that this record was the latest step in that direction. Research has shown the warming climate is making heat waves, droughts and floods more frequent and intense.

The Pacific Northwest is enduring its second heat wave of the summer, with temperatures expected to top 100 F as wildfires continue to burn in Oregon and nearby California.

According to NOAA, July was the hottest in 142 years of record-keeping.

The global combined land and ocean-surface temperature average was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, the agency said. The previous record was set in 2016, and repeated in 2019 and 2020.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the land-surface temperature for July was 2.77 degrees hotter than average.

It was Asia’s hottest July on record as well and the second-most-sweltering July for Europe, according to NOAA.

Last month ranked among the top 10 for warmest July ever in North America, South America, Africa and Oceania.

The new report also projects that “it remains very likely” that 2021 will rank among the world’s 10-warmest years on record, according to NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook.

The news came days after more than 200 climate scientists released a landmark report, which found that climate change will exacerbate extreme weather in the coming years while noting that cutting greenhouse gas emissions could prevent the worst outcomes, if people and governments began to act right away to move away from burning fossil fuels for energy.

Code Red for Humanity: UN Report Warns of ‘Unprecedented’ and ‘Catastrophic’ Climate Change

“Scientists from across the globe delivered the most up-to-date assessment of the ways in which the climate is changing,” Spinrad said in a statement. “It is a sobering IPCC report that finds that human influence is, unequivocally, causing climate change, and it confirms the impacts are widespread and rapidly intensifying.”

Notable Highlights

Sea ice coverage varied by hemisphere: The Arctic sea ice coverage (extent) for July 2021 was the fourth-smallest for July in the 43-year record, according to analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Centeroffsite link.

Only July 2012, 2019 and 2020 had a smaller sea ice extent. Antarctic sea ice extent was above average in July — the largest July sea ice extent since 2015 and the eighth highest on record.

The tropics were busier than average: In the Atlantic basin, the season’s earliest fifth-named storm, Elsa, formed on July 1. The Eastern North and Western Pacific basins each logged three named storms.

Overall, global tropical cyclone activity this year so far (through July) has been above-normal for the number of named storms.