July 3 was the hottest day our planet has experienced since at least 1979

While Earth hit record temperatures, scientists found the upper heat limit for the human body.

If the world felt like it was on fire earlier this week, it kind of was. According to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the average global temperature reached 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 degrees Celsius) on Monday and spiked to nearly 63 degrees (around 17.2 degrees Celsius) on Wednesday, making July 3 the hottest day our planet has experienced since at least 1979.

“[National Centers for Environmental Prediction] has placed Earth's average temperature yesterday as the hottest single day thus far measured by humans,” Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, tweeted on Tuesday. “This is driven by the combination of [natural climate phenomenon] El Niño on top of global warming, and we may well see a few even warmer days over the next [six] weeks.

Researchers at the University of Roehampton in the UK determined that the human body isn’t able to regulate its core body temperature when the weather gets to 104 degrees Fahrenheit or more, especially if there’s moderate to high humidity. According to findings presented Thursday at The Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, this physiological malfunction appears to be linked to the body's metabolic rate.

As we’ve seen for the past few years, dangerous heat waves are becoming a regular occurrence with no intention of going away until we can curb global greenhouse gas emissions. Heat stress can affect the body in a myriad of deleterious ways but what’s harder to pin down are these temperature shifts impact on health and well-being on a large scale. FULL STORY from Inverse