July, the hottest month of the planet in 120,000 years

July 2023 is expected to change previous heat standards, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, as scientists found he was on track to be the hottest month ever recorded, Reuters writes.

The United Nations World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the European Union's Climate Change Service, Copernicus, have also said in a joint statement that it was the extremely possible “” that July 2023 broke the heat record.

We should not wait for the end of the month to know that. Without a mini icepot over the next few days, July 2023 will break records. Climate change is here. It's awful. And it's just the beginning”, Guterres said, adding that the “epoque of global currency has come”.

The July heat effects have been experienced almost worldwide. Thousands of tourists fled the fires on the Greek island of Rhodes, and in the southwest US, there were extreme temperatures. The temperatures in a northwestern city of China rose to 52.2C, breaking the national record.

Although the WMO will not announce July as a record of heat months waiting for full availability of data, the University of Leipzig in Germany has already said July 2023 is the hottest month ever.

This month's average global temperature is projected to be at least 0.2C warmer than July 2019, once the hottest month in 174-year-old records, according to EU data.