According to the data, last Friday was the first day that the average global surface temperature exceeded two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, and first emerged from a dataset maintained by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, tweeted on the X website on Sunday: "Our best estimate is that this was the first day the global temperature was two degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 (or pre-industrial) levels, at 2.06 degrees Celsius."

When compared to the 1991-2020 average, Friday's global average was 1.17 degrees Celsius above average, Axios reported.

The reason this is important is that the fact that the average Earth's surface temperature rises daily to more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels indicates how fast the planet is warming, including some extreme events that are now possible.

While this is true, crossing the two-degree threshold in one day does not mean that the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping global warming at a level "well below" has been exceeded.

According to experts and data, this year is on track to be the hottest ever in the world in all surface weather datasets, and last September was the hottest on record, but it also saw the largest margin of any monthly record in history.

Since May, every month after it has set monthly global temperature records, with heatwaves sweeping large parts of the world, from the southern United States to Africa, South America, China and Japan.

Last summer, the average global surface temperature first rose to a record high and exceeded the Paris target of 1.5 degrees, which surprised some scientists, and the planet's failure to cool back below the record level was highlighted.

November is now also likely to be the hottest month on record.

The goals of one and a half degrees and two degrees have been set by political leaders, but scientific research reinforces the argument that if global warming exceeds the most stringent target, the likelihood of devastating and potentially irreversible climate disasters will increase dramatically.

While human-induced climate change is seen as the biggest driver of this year's unprecedented long-term warming and warmth increase, the powerful El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific is helping to pump more heat into the climate system, and this leads to higher temperatures, easily leading to record highs.