(CNN) July 2019 has replaced July 2016 as the hottest month on record, with meteorologists saying that global temperatures marginally exceeded the previous record.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Programme, which analyzes temperature data from around the planet, said that July was around 0.56 °C warmer than the global average temperature between 1981-2010.
That's slightly hotter than July 2016, when the world was in the throes of one of the strongest El Niño events on record.
El Niño events are characterized by warming of the ocean waters in the Pacific Ocean and have a pronounced warming effect on the Earth's average temperature.
Though there was a weak El Niño in place during the first part of 2019, it is transitioning to a more neutral phase, making the extreme July temperatures even more alarming.
The effects of climate change on the world
A flooded street in Miami Beach in September 2015. The flood was caused by a combination of seasonal high tides and what many believe is a rise in sea levels due to climate change. Miami Beach has already built
miles of seawalls and has embarked on a five-year, $400 million stormwater pump program to keep the ocean waters from inundating the city.
Sea water collects in front of a home in Tangier, Virginia, in May 2017. Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay has lost two-thirds of its landmass since 1850. Now, the 1.2 square mile island is suffering from floods and erosion and is slowly sinking. A
paper published in the journal Scientific Reports states that "the citizens of Tangier may become among the first climate change refugees in the continental USA."
The Pasterze glacier is Austria's largest and it's shrinking rapidly: the sign on the trail indicates where the foot of the glacier reached in 2015, a year before this photo was taken. The European Environmental Agency
predicts the volume of European glaciers will decline by between 22 percent and 89 percent by 2100, depending on the future intensity of greenhouse gases.
A NASA research aircraft flies over retreating glaciers on the Upper Baffin Bay coast of Greenland. Scientists say the Arctic is one of the regions hit hardest by climate change.
A wooden pole that had been driven into the ice the year before now stands exposed as the Aletsch glacier melts and sinks at a rate of about 10-13 meters per year near Bettmeralp, Switzerland.
In the Mississippi Delta, trees are withering away because of rising saltwater, creating "
Ghost Forests."
A street is flooded in Sun Valley, Southern California in February 2017. Powerful storms have swept Southern California after years of severe drought, in a "drought-to-deluge" cycle that some
believe is consistent with the consequences of global warming.
The carcass of a dead cow lies in the Black Umfolozi River, dry from the effects of a severe drought, in Nongoma district north west from Durban, in November 2015. South Africa ranks as the 30th driest country in the world and is considered a water-scarce region. A highly variable climate causes uneven distribution of rainfall, making droughts even more extreme.
A gigantic cloud of dust known as "Haboob" advances over Sudan's capital, Khartoum. Moving like a thick wall, it carries sand and dust burying homes, while increasing evaporation in a region that's struggling to preserve water supplies.
Experts say that without quick intervention, parts of the African country -- one of the most vulnerable in the world -- could become uninhabitable as a result of climate change.
Low tide reveals the extent of accelerated erosion shown by the amount of exposed beach rocks on Maafushi beach in the Maldives. This is the world's lowest-lying country, with no part lying more than six feet above sea level. The island nation's future is under threat from anticipated global sea level rise, with many of its islands already suffering from coastal erosion.
Los Glaciares National Park, part of the third largest ice field in the world, on November 27, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The majority of the almost 50 large glaciers in the park have been retreating during the past 50 years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
A boy from the remote Turkana tribe in Northern Kenya walks across a dried up river near Lodwar, Kenya. Millions of people across Africa are facing a critical shortage of water and food, a situation made worse by climate change.
An Indian farmer in a dried up cotton field in the southern Indian state of Telangana, in April 2016. Much of India is
reeling from a heat wave and severe drought conditions that have decimated crops, killed livestock and left at least 330 million people without enough water for their daily needs.
Strawberries lost due to a fungus that experts report is caused by climate change in La Tigra, Honduras, in September 2016. According to Germanwatch's Global Climate Risk Index, Honduras ranks among the countries most affected by climate change.
Jean-Noël Thépaut, head of the Copernicus program, said: "While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally by a very small margin."
"With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future," he added.
According to Copernicus, 2015 through 2018 have been the four warmest years on record. April, May and July this year all ranked among the warmest on record for those months, and this June was the hottest ever.
Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at Copernicus, told CNN last week that the data suggested we are on track for the second-hottest year ever, after 2016.
The temperature record was close to 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
This means we are rapidly approaching the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees, which will precipitate the risk of extreme weather events and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year that we have until 2030 to avoid such catastrophic levels of global warming and called on governments to meet their obligations under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
Almost 200 countries and the European Union have pledged to keep the global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius as part of the Paris Agreement.
Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said last week that this July has "rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at the local, national and global level."
In pictures: Water crisis and heatwave in India
Civic workers remove dead fish floating at a partially dried up lake in Ambattur, Chennai, India, Tuesday, June 18.
Indian women from the aboriginal 'Kol' community collect drinking water at a well in Nawargawa village, some 30km from Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh state on June 16.
An Indian shepherd walks with their lifestock at the dried out Puzhal reservoir on the outskirts of Chennai.
A boy jumps into the Ganges River to cool off on a hot summer day in Kolkata, India, on Monday, June 3.
A general view of a lake running dry on a hot summer day near Ajmer on Sunday, June 2. Temperatures passed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in northern India as an unrelenting heatwave triggered warnings of water shortages and heatstroke.
An Indian girl eats an ice lolly during a hot day in Churu in Rajastahn on Monday, June 3.
Monkeys cool themselves off in a pond during a hot day in Allahabad on Sunday, June 2.
Indian youths play in a swimming pool on a hot summer day on the outskirts of Amritsar on June 2.
An Indian auto driver rests under a bridge on a hot summer afternoon in Allahabad on Sunday, June 2.
Indian laborers sleep on a side walk in Prayagraj on Sunday, June 2.
Indian villagers take buckets down a well running dry to collect drinking water at Padal village of the district of Samba, some 45 kilometers from Jammu, on Sunday, June 2. A heatwave triggered warnings of water shortages and heatstroke.
Commuters cover their faces with clothes to protect themselves from sun on a hot summer day in Hyderabad on Monday, June 3.
An Indian man rests under a bridge during a hot summer afternoon in Allahabad on Sunday, June 2.
Indian volunteers distribute sweet water during a hot summer day, in Amritsar on Sunday, June 2.
An Indian man uses a towel to wipe the sweat on his face on a hot and humid summer day in Hyderabad on Monday, June 3.
People fill containers with water from a mobile tanker at a slum area on the outskirts of Jammu on Monday, June 3.
An Indian laborer takes a rest under the shade of an auto-rickshaw on a hot summer day in Jammu on Monday, June 3.
Air coolers are seen on display at a shop in Churu in Rajasthan on Monday, June 3.
The July record comes after a period of extremely hot weather around the world.
Intense heat waves have swept Europe this summer, breaking temperature records in at least a dozen countries. Scientists have warned that the world should expect more scorching heat waves and extreme weather due to climate change.
Europe wasn't the only region baking in July. Anchorage, Alaska, recorded its hottest month ever, and extreme heat helped facilitate "unprecedented" wildfires in the Arctic and triggered mass melting of Greenland's ice sheet.
"This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now, and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action. Time is running out to rein in dangerous temperature increases with multiple impacts on our planet," Taalas stressed.