According to data released by European climate scientists, October 2023 has become the warmest October on record globally. This comes after the previous month held the title for the hottest September and global summer months experienced record high temperatures, marking a year of unprecedented heat around the world.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, stated, “We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.”
The analysis, heavily reliant on computer modeling and utilizing billions of measurements from various sources, revealed that the global temperature difference compared to the long-term average for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in the Copernicus dataset, only behind September 2023. The analysis encompasses data from January 1940 to the present.
In reference to the data from September, Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, commented, “As global temperatures shattered records and reached dangerous new highs over and over the past few months, my climate scientist colleagues and I have just about run out of adjectives to describe what we have seen.”
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is set to commence in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates at the end of the month.
Dr. Burgess emphasized, “The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into COP28 has never been higher.”