Summer is here again, and for another year temperature records are being shattered.

This time though, it’s not just national records which are being broken: the Earth’s average temperature as a whole was at its record high this week.

Earth's average temperature on Wednesday remained at an unofficial record high set the day before, the latest grim milestone in a week that has seen series of climate-change-driven extremes.

The average global temperature was 17.18 degrees Celsius, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world's condition. That matched a record set Tuesday, and came after a previous record of 17.01 degrees Celsius was set Monday.

One of the largest contributors to this week's records is an exceptionally mild winter in the Antarctic, according to data from the Climate Reanalyzer. Parts of the continent and nearby ocean were 10-20 degrees Celsius warmer than averages from 1979-2000.

Scientists have warned for months that 2023 could see record heat as human-caused climate change, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil, warmed the atmosphere.

"A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future," Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations, said.

While in Malta perhaps right now the concern is out of people’s minds, particularly as we are yet to be hit by any intense heat waves or extreme weather events this summer: make no mistake, this is as worrying news for us as it is for anyone else.

It may not be felt in the present, but Malta’s climate will only get worse as the globe warms further.  The heat will just become more unbearable, the heat waves will become more frequent, and the weather extremes in other periods of the year will only become more extreme.

The news that the Antarctic is facing a particularly mild winter with far higher than average sea temperatures will only serve to increase the rate at which the ice fields are melting, and the rate at which the seas are rising.

As an island nation – even if we are halfway across the planet from the Antarctic – that should worry us.  The impact of rising seas if things continue the way they are now will no doubt be felt by generations to come.

The rise in sea levels, for instance, makes the risk of a tsunami in the Mediterranean all the more prevalent.  Experts in fact have said that they have 100% certainty that a tsunami will occur in the Mediterranean within the next 30 years.

Malta has been in a state of climate emergency since 2019 but action to reflect this state has been somewhat lacking.  There is plenty of talk about targets being set and agreements being made – but we need to start transferring this into action.

Talk is cheap: it’s the action to back it up that is what matters.  We need to be ambitious in the measures we take – starting from the top echelons of the government, filtering down to the youngest of us all.

The clock is ticking for us to take enough action; and right now it feels like time is running out.