It is the hottest summer in recorded history. (It is also possibly the coolest summer of the rest of our lives.) Records are falling left and right, and the numbers from this summer are nothing short of staggering. Here are some that show just how hot it’s been this summer.
(A fair word of warning before we jump into superlatives: Just because these temperatures are the highest humans have ever seen does not mean they’re the highest ever.)
150 million: The approximate number of people who were under heat alerts as of Thursday.
62.78 degrees Fahrenheit: The average temperature on Earth on July 6 — the hottest ever recorded.
128 degrees Fahrenheit: The high in Death Valley on July 17, one of the highest temperatures ever recorded accurately there — or in the history of the planet.
126 degrees: The temperature in a Xinjiang, China township, the hottest recorded in the country’s history.
90 degrees: The high in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Monday.
44 percent: The portion of the world’s oceans that are experiencing heat waves, with temperatures 9 to 18 degrees above normal off the coast of Newfoundland .
249: How many people have died in Mexico due to heat over the last four months, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.
46: How many days in a row Miami’s heat index sat above 100 before the first day it stayed in the double-digits.
28: How many days Phoenix has recorded a high temperature above 110 degrees, shattering the record of 18 days set in 1974.
1: The number of 24/7 cooling centers open in Phoenix.
532:How many months in a row global temperatures have sat above the 20th-century average.
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