This September was the warmest on record globally, following on from the hottest summer, putting the world on track to record its warmest year ever, EU earth monitoring service Copernicus said.
The world's surface air temperature averaged 16.38°C in September, Copernicus data show, which was 0.5°C higher than the previous record in September 2020. The temperature was 0.93°C above the average for the month from 1991-2020 and about 1.75°C above pre-industrial levels.
Last month was the "most anomalous warm month of any year" in datasets stretching back to 1940, Copernicus said.
It also marked the warmest September on record for Europe, at 1.1°C above the previous record in September 2020 and 2.51°C above the 1991-2020 average.
The global temperature from January-September this year was 0.52°C higher than that of the first nine months of 2016, the warmest calendar year on record, Copernicus data show.
"The unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September — following a record summer — have broken records by an extraordinary amount," deputy director of the Copernicus climate change service Samantha Burgess said. "This extreme month has pushed 2023 into the dubious honour of first place — on track to be the warmest year and about 1.4°C above pre-industrial average temperatures. Two months out from [UN climate conference] Cop 28, the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical."
The El Nino weather pattern began to develop earlier this year, which tends to push global temperatures to above-average levels. The World Meteorological Organization predicts that this phenomenon, in combination with greenhouse gas emissions, could see world temperatures exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5°C in at least one of the next five years.
