Hottest week on record UN warns that climate crisis is now out of control

The UN secretary-general has said that "climate change is out of control", as an unofficial analysis of data showed that average world temperatures in the seven days to 5 July were the hottest week on record.

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"If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation, as the last two records in temperature demonstrates," António Guterres said, referring to the world temperature records broken last Monday and Tuesday.

The average global air temperature was 17.18C on 4 July, according to data collated by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), surpassing the record 17.01C reached the previous day.

For the seven-day period ending 5 July, the daily average temperature was .04C higher than any week in 44 years of record-keeping, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer data. That metric showed Earth's average temperature on 5 July remained at the record high of 17.18C.

Climate Reanalyzer uses data from the NCEP climate forecast system to provide a time series of daily mean two-metre air temperature, based on readings from surface, air balloon and satellite observations.