Earth’s average temperature has “shattered” the previous record for September by more than 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, the biggest monthly margin ever recorded.
According to separate analyses by climate scientists from Japan and Europe, last month temperatures all over the world were more like July, reported The Washington Post.
“It’s astounding to see the previous record broken by so much,” said Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as WIRED reported. “And astounding to see that the global temperature this September is on par with what we normally see in July — the hottest month of the year, typically. So it really just illustrates how profoundly our climate is shifting.”
The average global temperature for September was about 1.8 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
“The first global temperature data is in for the full month of September. This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and was around 1.8C warmer than [pre-industrial] levels,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate researcher with Berkeley Earth, posted on X.
The temperature estimates were calculated using climate models based on data from all over the globe.
“Concerning, worrying, wild — whatever superlative you want to use,” said Kate Marvel, senior scientist at nonprofit Project Drawdown, as reported by WIRED. “That’s what it is.”
Weather satellite data also revealed that September was by far the warmest ever, which scientists say is indicative of El Niño along with human-caused climate change.
The current El Niño climate pattern is still developing, but the phenomenon is generally known to add a few tenths of a degree Celsius through the transfer of ocean warmth into the atmosphere. It does this through wind patterns moving over the tropics that allow heat from the ocean’s depths to rise to the surface.
“I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years. Just by adding the latest data point, the linear warming trend since 1979 increased by 10%,” Mika Rantanen, a weather and climate change impact researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said on X.
The last major El Niño was in 2015 and 2016, but the planet is much hotter this year. There have been marine heat waves across the globe, increasing the likelihood of the extreme weather, flooding and brutal heat that people all over the world have been experiencing.
“What the science says is that every tenth of a degree matters. Every ton of emissions that can be avoided matters. If the world passes 1.5, then you shoot for 1.6. If it passes 1.6, you shoot for 1.7. And I think we now know after this year how 1.5 is not safe,” Marvel said, as WIRED reported.