The World's Record Heat Waves

raquelgoulartra
Aug 8
2 min read

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Anna Fleck

Japan saw its hottest day on record on Wednesday, reaching 41.2°C/106.16°F in Tamba, in the western prefecture of Hyogo. This surpasses the previous high of 41.1°C/105.98°F set in 2018 and hit again in 2020.

According to NASA, there is “unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate”. Data from Copernicus, the European Earth Observation program for the European Space Agency, shows that July 22, 2024, was the world’s hottest daily global average temperature since the institution’s records began in 1940 (hitting a global average of 17.16 °C/62.76 °F).

At a regional scale too, absolute temperature records are being broken around the globe. Just in the years 2022-2024, 36 countries broke their all-time national heat records, some of them more than once. In 2025, no all-time records were broken so far. Some of the most recent records were set in Southeast Asia in 2024, when an exceptional heatwave hit the region. Cambodia set a new record at 42.8 °C/109.0 °F, while Laos hit a new all-time high of 43.7 °C/110.7 °F.

Meanwhile, Australia and Uruguay matched their national records in 2022, with 50.7 °C/123.3 °F in Onslow and 44.0°C/111.2 °F in Florida, respectively, as the United Kingdom saw the mercury break an all-time high in July 2022 as it passed the 40°C barrier.

Previously, during the summer of 2021 - one of the hottest on Earth -, Canada, Spain and Italy recorded peak temperatures. The Italian record, 48.8 °C/119.8 °F at Syracuse, was reported to be the highest temperature ever measured in Europe, which was certified by the WMO in 2024.

In Antarctica, a new record was hit in 2020 at the Esperanza base during the austral summer when temperatures rose to over 18 °C/64.9 °F. One year earlier, the French national record of 46 °C/114.8 °F was measured at Vérargues (Hérault), while the 2019 heatwave also saw other records broken in Europe, such as in Belgium and Germany.

According to the WMO, the world record is still officially attributed to Furnace Creek, in California’s Death Valley National Park, with 56.7 °C/134 °F reached in 1913.

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