A person rests under an umbrella as the sun sets on September 12, 2023 in Newport Beach, California. Warming somehow got even worse in September, as the planet set new records for much higher than normal temperatures after a record-breaking summer. Temperatures were record high, as reported by the European Climate Organization.Ryan Sun/AP Hide Caption
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A person rests under an umbrella as the sun sets on September 12, 2023 in Newport Beach, California. Warming somehow got even worse in September, as the planet set new records for much higher than normal temperatures after a record-breaking summer. Temperatures were record high, as reported by the European Climate Organization.
Ryan Sun/Associated Press
After the hottest summer on record, warming somehow got even worse in September as the planet set a new record for how much above normal temperatures it was, the European Climate Agency reported on Thursday.
Last month’s average temperature was 0.93 degrees Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average September temperature from 1991 to 2020. This is the warmest margin above the monthly average in 83 years of records kept by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
“It’s truly amazing,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. “We have never seen anything like that in any month in our records.”
July and August are warm months on the calendar, so temperatures were actually higher, but September had what scientists call the biggest anomaly, a departure from normal. Temperature abnormalities are important data in an increasingly warming world.
“This is not a flashy weather statistic,” Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College of London, said in an email. “This is a death sentence for people and ecosystems. It destroys assets, infrastructure and crops.”
Copernicus calculated that the average temperature in September was 16.38 degrees Celsius (61.48 degrees Fahrenheit). This beat the old record set in September 2020 by a whopping 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit). This is a huge difference in the climate record.
High temperatures have spread around the world, largely due to persistent and unusually warm oceans around the world, which have not cooled down as much as usual in September and have been the hottest on record since spring. said Buontempo.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said Earth had its hottest year on record, about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than before the industrial revolution.
Copernicus reported that this September was 1.75 degrees Celsius (3.15 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in the mid-1800s. In 2015, the world agreed to try to limit future global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The global standard 1.5 degrees Celsius target is for long-term temperature averages, not single months or years. But scientists still expressed grave concerns about the records being set.
“What we’re seeing now is against a backdrop of the natural climate cycle known as El Niño and rapid global warming at a pace the Earth hasn’t seen in many years.” American climatologist and president of the Evangelical Environmental Network Jessica Morman says: “This double whammy makes things dangerous.”
Buontempo said that while El Niño has played a role, climate change is having a bigger impact on the warmth.
“Given that new oil and gas reserves are still being developed for exploitation, there is really no end in sight,” Otto said. “If there is another record heatwave, there will be no rest or time for recovery for humans and nature.”
Buontempo said El Nino could become even warmer next year, leading to even higher temperatures.
“In my professional opinion as a climate scientist, this month has been really bananas,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
