"In this case, first place is the worst case" This is how NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad sums up the undesirable achievement of Earth registering its warmest calendar month in records spanning the last 142 years.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that Australia had notched up its fourth warmest July on record.

This feat was based on surface temperature observations collected locally by the Bureau of Meteorology, using 112 weather stations scattered across the country.

But Australia's near-record warmth in July wasn't as abnormal as our planet as a whole.

According to newly released data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, Earth just had its warmest month on record. Not just the warmest July, but the warmest month outright.

Image: July global combined land and ocean surface temperature anomalies between 1880 and 2021. Source: NOAA/NCEI

NOAA data shows that Earth's combined land and ocean-surface temperature in July 2021 was 0.93ºC above the 20th century average. This was 0.01ºC hotter than the previous record from July 2016.

July is typically our planet's warmest month, but this one was something else.

The Northern Hemisphere did a lot of the heavy lifting last month, with the hemisphere's land-surface only temperature also setting a new record for July. More locally, Asia had its hottest July on record and Europe its 2nd hottest.

Image: Global land and ocean surface temperature percentiles in July 2021. Source: NOAA/NCEI

The unrivalled global heat manifested itself in a number of ways. One of the most significant was record-breaking temperatures and subsequent bushfires that ravaged parts of Canada and the Western United States.

News of our planet's record-breaking July warmth came out a matter of days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report on the state of our planet's climate.

The report showed that Earth's climate has already warmed by more than 1ºC since the start of the 1900's, largely in response to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases release by human activity.