The monsoon is retreating across the Indian subcontinent, and with no rain to cool down the scorched earth, the temperature is rising again in full fury. And it isn't even October yet for all the heat.
But if you're feeling uncomfortable under the sun's growing heat, you aren't alone. The earth hasn't experienced this hot weather for more than 1 lakh years, according to NASA.
reuters
Following NASA's announcement earlier in the year that July 2018 was the warmest month on record -- since record keeping began in 1880 -- climate scientists believe earth is now experiencing unprecedented warm weather.
Global warming is reaching dangerous levels, as earth is now experiencing heat waves it hasn't seen in 120,000 years, dating back to a geological period called the Eemian -- a period between 1.3 to 1.2 lakh years ago where average earth temperature was estimated to be 1 to 2 degrees higher than what it is now, according to a Mashable report.
NASA
The warm wave on earth is so strong, in fact, that it has now eclipsed a highly warm period from earth's history which took place around 7,000 years ago, after the last ice age ended, called the Holocene.
Earth fluctuates between warm and cold weather all the time, and the natural cycle of this phenomenon has been "going on forever," according to Pat Bartlein, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Oregon who has researched temperatures since the last ice age. "But the key thing is that since industrialization, we¡¯ve been put on a completely different schedule," he emphasized.
NASA
Humans are putting greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere at an overwhelming rate, and it's causing all the temperature rise all over the world.
If we don't do something soon to reverse this trend, we will have to sweat over far more dangerous consequences in the near future.