Planet Earth is on track for 2023 to become the hottest year since at least 1940, when the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) historical surface air temperature series began after last month was the warmest October on record.
The latest Copernicus climate bulletin, released this Wednesday, indicates that the global temperature from January to October of this year was 1.43 degrees above the average of the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) and 0.10 degrees higher than the first 10 months of 2016, which until now held the record.
All in all, Copernicus states that it is “practically certain that 2023 will be the warmest year ever recorded” after an October with “exceptional temperature anomalies.”
Last month it turned out to be the warmest October in the world, with an average surface air temperature of 15.30 degrees, that is, 0.85 more than the October average of the reference period between 1991 and 2020, and 0.40 degrees above the previous record, from October 2019.
Additionally, that global temperature anomaly in October was the second highest of any month since 1940, only behind that of September 2023. And October as a whole was 1.7 degrees warmer than the average estimate for October between 1850 and 1900.