Most, if not all, climate scientists had a feeling that the next two years were going to be pretty warm, but I think everyone has been a little surprised just how warm globally it has been,” said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Princeton University.
From CCC:
- September 2023 was the warmest September on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 16.38°C, 0.93°C above the 1991-2020 average for September and 0.5°C above the temperature of the previous warmest September, in 2020.
- The global temperature for January-September 2023 was 0.52°C higher than average, and 0.05°C higher than the equivalent period in the warmest calendar year (2016).
- For January to September 2023, the global mean temperature for 2023 to date is 1.40°C higher than the preindustrial average (1850-1900).
- For Europe, September 2023 was the warmest September on record, at 2.51°C higher than the 1991-2020 average, and 1.1°C higher than 2020, the previous warmest September.
- The average sea surface temperature for September over 60°S–60°N reached 20.92°C, the highest on record for September and the second highest across all months, behind August 2023.
- El Niño conditions continued to develop over the equatorial eastern Pacific.
According to CBS: “We’ve been through the most incredible September ever from a climate point of view. It’s just beyond belief,” Copernicus Climate Change Service director Carlo Buontempo told the AFP news agency. “Climate change is not something that will happen 10 years from now. Climate change is here.”
The report said 2023 was on course to be the hottest year ever recorded.
Per NBC, ” In the Southern Hemisphere, unseasonably warm temperatures have been recorded across South America and Australia, all coming on the heels of multiple bouts of extreme heat in previous months, during what should have been the winter season in that part of the world.