Earth’s average temperature hit a new record high on Thursday, the third warmest in a single week.
The planetary average hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit, 17.23 degrees Celsius, better than Tuesday’s highs of 62.9 and 17.18 degrees, and on par with Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, which uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure global conditions. situation.
This average includes places that swelter in dangerous temperatures — like Jingxing, China, where it reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) — and unusually warm places like Antarctica, where temperatures were as high as 8 on most of the continent. degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) above normal this week.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued a cautionary note about the findings of the Maine instrument, which in part failed to confirm data from computer modeling.
“While NOAA cannot confirm the methodology or conclusions of the University of Maine’s analysis, we do recognize that we are in for a warming climate due to climate change,” NOAA said.
Still, Maine’s data was taken as another alarming sign of climate change around the world. Some climate scientists said they were not surprised to see the irregular records this week.
“Governments and the private sector are not really committed to tackling climate change,” said Robert Watson, a scientist and former chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They are not citizens either.
“They want cheap energy, cheap food and they don’t want to pay the actual cost of food and energy,” Watson said.
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Borenstein reported from Washington, and O’Malley from Philadelphia.
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