Brussels:
European Union scientists said on Wednesday that this year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest in 125,000 years, as data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period.
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last month the previous October temperature record set in 2019 was broken by a wide margin.
“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge difference,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S. He described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.
This warming is the result of continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, combined with the emergence of the El Niño weather pattern this year, which warms surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
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Globally, the average surface air temperature in October was 1.7 °C warmer than the corresponding month in 1850–1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period.
The record-breaking October means 2023 is now “almost certain” to be the hottest year ever, C3S said in a statement. The previous record was 2016 – another El Niño year.
Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, we can say this is the hottest year of the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said.
Long-term data from the UN climate science panel IPCC includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral deposits.
Only for the second time before October, the temperature record was broken by such a huge margin in September 2023.
“September really caught us by surprise,” Burgess said. So after last month, it’s hard to determine whether we’re in a new climate state. But now the records are falling and they seem to me to be worse than a month ago. are less surprising in comparison.”
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said: “Most El Niño years are now record-breaking, as the excess global heat from El Niño amplifies the steady increase of human-caused warming.”
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Climate change is increasingly leading to destructive extremes. This year, that includes floods that killed thousands in Libya, extreme heat in South America and Canada’s worst wildfire season on record.
“We must not let the devastating floods, wildfires, storms and heatwaves we have seen this year become the new normal,” said Piers Forster, climate scientist at the University of Leeds.
“By rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, we could halve the rate of warming,” he said.
Despite countries setting ambitious targets to gradually cut emissions, this has not happened so far. Global CO2 emissions to reach record high in 2022.
