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The world set a new temperature record on Tuesday (July 4), breaking the record set one day earlier. According to data from the United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the average global temperature was 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking Monday's record of 62.62 degrees.
Before Monday, the hottest average temperature on Earth was recorded in August 2016, when the average global temperature topped out at 62.45 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tens of millions of Americans felt extreme heat as they celebrated Independence Day, with over 57 million under dangerous heat warnings.
While records only go back to 1979, some scientists believe that July 4th was the hottest day in the last 125,000 years. Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at London's Grantham Institute, told The Washington Post that evidence from tree rings and ice cores indicates the Earth hasn't been this warm since a period of time between ice ages over 100,000 years ago.
"These data tell us that it hasn't been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial," Ceppi said.
Scientists believe that the record will likely be broken several more times before the end of the year, due in part to the return of the El Niño weather pattern and the start of summer in the northern hemisphere.
"When's the hottest day likely to be? It's going to be when global warming, El Niño, and the annual cycle all line up together. Which is the next couple months," Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at Oxford University, told The Washington Post. "It's a triple whammy."