A top temperature of 31.2C recorded last month was 14.1C higher than on the same date a century before.
Armagh Planetarium and Observatory has been collecting weather data for almost 200 years. And thermometer readings recorded on the same date each decade for the last 100 years confirm temperatures are rising.
While this year's July 18 was hotter than most, details going back 100 years still highlight a warming trend.
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The Planetarium’s director Professor Michael G Burton says the data they have collected also shows five of the top 10 July 18 temperatures have happened in the last 16 years.
“We can see what’s going on in our weather record," he added.
"Over the course of 200 years, you can clearly see the rise in the average temperature over the last three or four decades is very apparent. There’s no doubt there’s a warming going on.”
Climate scientists have been warning for decades that human activity is causing global warming but some still don’t believe the science.
Professor Burton said they keep track of temperatures in Armagh with “dry bulb” thermometers.
He added: “It’s a technical term but it means air temperature. You don’t measure where the sun shines because you don’t get a reliable temperature.
“We typically measure at 9am each day and the maximum temperature is within a 24-hour period.
“From the scientific point of view there is absolutely no doubt the temperatures are changing – we see it all over the world.
“It’s clear it’s the last three or four decades where the impact is significant. Where the debate comes in is what’s actually causing it and a lot of research goes into looking at that and climate change.
“The modelling doesn’t find any other rational explanation for what’s going on.
“If you add gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it acts like a kind of blanket and absorbs the radiation coming in.
“It gets trapped by the various molecules in the air. If you change the amount of carbon dioxide you are going to change the amount of heat that is trapped and that’s what we are seeing.
“The real trouble is what we have to do to counter this incredibly challenging situation.
“We have to essentially stop the production of these greenhouse gases or slow it down. People don’t want to accept this is the case.
“What’s specific to us in this part of the world is peat burning because peat is readily available. It’s an intense contributor to greenhouse gases. Both coal and peat are soups of greenhouse gases.
“Over the course of geological time the carbon dioxide which was in the atmosphere, a lot of it has gone into these materials which were in the ground.
“By burning it we are releasing back the accumulated emissions over millions of years and we’re putting that back into the atmosphere and that’s ultimately the cause of the warming.
“If we look at the top 10 July 18 [temperatures] – five of them have happened in the last 16 years.”
Professor Burton was among the officials and academics from Northern Ireland invited to COP26 in Glasgow last year.
He said: “The younger generation are certainly aware. We have a climate change exhibition now [and] we can be a vehicle for showing and explaining what’s going on and making people aware of the nature of the problem.
“That’s what we did in the Planetarium show for COP26. We have to appreciate and understand what’s going on before we have to address that problem.
“There’s an awareness that we have to make that change but when you ask people what they are prepared to do to cut that down, I can’t even answer that myself.
“There’s a limit to what individuals can do, it has to be at a societal level.
“The big things are how we produce electricity and we have to solve that as a society.
“Our ambition is to further explore the use of our dome for education and explain what’s going on.”
Sea levels raise alarm
A Met Office report on climate change found sea levels and temperatures are rising in Britain and Ireland faster than thought. Dr Mark McCarthy of the National Climate Information Centre said: “In a climate unaffected by humans, it would be virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40C but climate change is already making UK heatwaves more frequent, intense and long-lasting.”
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