July 2021 – Hottest month on record

Subject – Environment

Context – July 2021 is the hottest month on record. Significantly, seven of the warmest Julys have occurred since 2015.

Concept –

Since 1880, the month of July 2021 was the hottest on Earth. This is what the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) July report on global climate has said.
While July is typically the hottest month on Earth, July 2021 has earned the number one spot as the world’s warmest July ever recorded in NOAA’s 142-year history of record keeping.
Report has also said that it is likely that 2021 will feature in the list of the ten warmest years on record.
The report says that the global land-only surface temperature for July was 40 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average, making it the highest July land-only surface temperature on record.
The previous record was held by Julys in 2017 and 2020.
In particular, Asia’s July 2021 surface temperature was 61 degrees Celsius higher than average. This made it the highest July temperature that Asia has seen since 1910.
The global temperature increase is crucial because if the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius, about 14 per cent of the Earth’s population may be exposed to severe heat waves at least once every five years, NASA notes.
At a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, 37 per cent of the global population will be exposed to the same.