First Thing: July likely to be hottest month on record, says Nasa

Gavin Schmidt of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies warns of likelihood of new high as heatwave bakes large parts of planet. Plus, the beginning of the end for the great Megan Rapinoe

Good morning.

July is likely to be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years, Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters yesterday, as a persistent heatwave baked swaths of the US south.

What impact will the heat have? Successive heatwaves threaten nature’s ability to provide us with food, say researchers, as they warn of an “unseen, silent dying” in our oceans amid record temperatures scorching the Earth. Heatwaves are ripping through Europe, the US and China, with the global hottest day ever recorded at the start of July, endangering human life as well as the land and sea it depends on.

What is happening in the US? A 71-year-old man collapsed and died in Death Valley on Tuesday as temperatures in the valley – the point of lowest elevation in North America as well as one of the hottest places in the world – reached at least 121F (49.4C). “Heat may have been a factor in his death,” Death Valley national park officials said in a press release.

What else is happening? President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, according to Reuters. It reports the published presidential order gave no reason for the dismissal, but said Prystaiko had also been removed as Ukraine’s representative to the International Maritime Organization.