September has become the fourth month in a row to smash global temperature records.
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According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), this September had the highest global temperatures since measurements began in 1940.
At a surface air temperature of 16.38 degrees Celsius, the month topped out at 0.93 degrees higher than the 1991-2020 average and 0.5 degrees higher than the previous peak set in 2020. The findings have shocked scientists.
‘It’s not just the hottest September on record,’ Dr Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist for Imperial College London, told Geographical. ‘It’s the hottest by a wide margin. We expect temperatures to continue rising with steadily increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. But it’s striking to see this big jump.’
The temperature rises are as a result of a developing El Niño event, which is causing the Pacific Ocean to warm and global temperatures to rise. But the El Niño event is also amplifying the effects of warming caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Dr Ceppi said he shared the ‘surprise’ of his colleagues at the findings, noting that the temperature was 1.75 degrees above the pre-industrial average, defined as the last 50 years of the 19th century.
‘That’s way over 1.5,’ he said, ‘That doesn’t mean we have definitely passed the 1.5 degrees threshold because that’s based on longer periods, but it means we’re seeing temperatures that are way over the limit that we’re hoping not to exceed.”
June, July and August broke records for the highest global averages too, putting 2023 on course to becoming the hottest year ever. The current trajectory sees the yearly average coming in at 1.4 degrees higher than the pre-industrial norm.
Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute, said: ‘Temperature records continue to be broken because we have not stopped burning fossil fuels. It is that simple.
‘The significant margin matters. People and ecosystems are dying. This should be a wake-up call for policymakers and negotiators ahead of COP28 – we absolutely must agree to phase out fossil fuels.’
Averaged out, global temperatures have warmed to around 1.1 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels due to human activities, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
But with El Niño set to climax in the winter, and expected to bring about a string of erratic and extreme weather events over the next few months, this year might be giving us a taste of what the world will feel like at sustained 1.5 degree warming.
The findings from C3S are generated using billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world. The research institution, which is commissioned to produce monthly temperature and hydraulics updates by the European Union, also reported a record-low amount of sea ice for this time of year.
Satellite records revealed ice sheet coverage was nine per cent lower than the monthly average.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of CS3 said ‘the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical.’
Global emissions are higher than ever – with last year’s figures coming in at over 37 billion tonnes from the fossil fuel industry alone.
Just shy of two months away from COP28 in Dubai, and in light of the UK government’s recent watering down of net zero targets, experts around the world are urging politicians to come together and act decisively.
Dr Ceppi said: ‘International Climate Policy is aiming for limiting global warming to 1.5. And we can see we’re getting extremely close to that limit. We really need to take action very quickly and go beyond the climate pledges to actually implement the policies that are needed to achieve our targets.’
