September 2023 was world’s hottest September on record by ‘extraordinary’ margin, new data confirms, with scientists blaming more than climate change
September 2023 was not only the hottest September on record, new data has confirmed today, but it was warmer by a margin described by stunned scientists as “extraordinary”, “huge” and “whopping”.
It keeps the world on course for its hottest year ever, expected to be 1.4C warmer than before the industrial era.
The new record is just the latest to be shattered this year, following a record hot June, July and summer overall, and record hot September in the UK.
Scientists are pointing the finger primarily at climate change, and warned of worse to come. But they also put it down to a warm weather pattern called El Nino, and natural changes in the weather.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed today that in September average surface air temperatures globally reached 16.38C.
The figure is 0.93C above the average for September during the last two decades, and a significant 0.5C warmer than the previous warmest ever September, in 2020.
The margin has astonished scientists.
Record heat in September smashed previous records by a “huge” 0.5C margin
“It’s huge,” said Professor Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at Reading University. “We shouldn’t be breaking records by this amount.”
Piers Forster – the interim chair of the government’s Climate Change Committee but speaking in his capacity as climate change professor at Leeds University – said variations between months each year are usually quite small.
“Therefore, breaking the previous September record by a whopping 0.5C is crazy and shows something really bizarre is going on,” he said.
Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said the “unprecedented temperatures” for September broke records by “an extraordinary amount”.
With two months until the next global climate talks, COP28 in Dubai in December, the “urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical”, added Dr Burgess.
The sea was hot too
Today’s findings are based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
They confirmed that temperatures on the ocean surface had also soared in September, reaching the second highest ever, behind only August 2023.
Scientists have also been alarmed by the record low sea ice cover in Antarctica, which C3S confirmed has continued into September.
It is fuelling worries that climate change is finally catching up with the continent once thought to be relatively shielded.
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Why was September and this summer so hot globally?
Part of the heat has come from a natural switch in the tropical east Pacific around July from a cool El Nina phase to a warm El Nino one, influencing temperatures around the world.
But while a combination of factors are at play, including natural variability from year to year, scientists believe the main cause is climate change.
Prof Forster said: “We think it’s caused by a combination of factors, principally greenhouse gas emissions being at an all time high.”
Global temperatures have warmed by around 1.1C since the pre-industrial era due to human activity, according to UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“What we’re seeing this year is there is a bump on top of that,” said Prof Hawkins, which could be “due to other factors such as El Nino or other weather patterns”.
“But the largest component by far is the fact that we have added so much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.”
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UK climate deaths since 1990
Prof Hawkins said month after month of record heat was not necessarily a sign the climate crisis was accelerating, but a taste of the future under continued global warming.
Extreme weather events this summer – like fires in the Mediterranean, floods in New York or heatwaves in the UK – will become “more frequent and sadly become normal”, he added.
He said climate change is exacerbating flooding because warmer air can hold more water, meaning rainfall is heavier.
It also makes naturally occurring heatwaves even hotter, and it fuels the hot and dry conditions that allow wildfires to spread rapidly, even if the fires were sparked by something unrelated, he added.
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Friedrich Merz, who is set to become the new German chancellor, has vowed to “create unity” in Europe as it adjusts to the new Trump administration and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Mr Merz’s task will be complicated by the need to form a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats of outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz, who will remain in office for the immediate future.
He has repeatedly pledged not to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, despite its second-place finish but which is under observation by the country’s intelligence agency for suspected right-wing extremism.
Mr Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union, which won with 28.5% of the votes, and the Social Democrats have a combined 328 seats in the 630-seat parliament.
The 69-year-old, who put toughening Germany’s immigration laws at the forefront of the election campaign, said he hopes to complete a deal by Easter.
Experts believe this could prove to be a challenging timescale as the rivals try to find common ground over key policies.
Co-leader of the Social Democrats, Lars Klingbeil, indicated a deal with Mr Merz is not a formality.
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The path to power may not be smooth for Merz
He said: “The ball is in Friedrich Merz’s court. Only the course of any talks will show whether a government can be formed.”
With US President Donald Trump back in the White House and tensions rising over how to resolve the war in Ukraine, Mr Merz wants to unify Europe in the face of challenges from the US and Russia.
“I have no illusions at all about what is happening from America,” he told supporters.
“We are under such massive pressure… my absolute priority now is really to create unity in Europe.”
Read more:
Who is Friedrich Merz – the trained pilot?
The woman at the top of Germany’s far-right AfD party
At a media conference later, he added: “There are three topics we need to talk about. Of course, external and security policy – especially following the statements coming out of Washington.
“It is clear that we as Europeans need to be able to act swiftly. We need to be able to defend ourselves. That is a topic that is a top priority in the next few weeks.”
Mr Merz said he remains “hopeful” of maintaining the transatlantic relationship, but warned if it “is destroyed, it will not only be to the detriment of Europe, it will also be to the detriment of America”.
On the other key issues, he added: “Another important topic is the immigration – that is an area where we have proposals. I suppose the Social Democrats will be prepared to talk to us about this as well.
“The third topic is the economic situation. We have to protect work in the industrial sector in Germany.”
He also earlier used social media to say “Europe stands unwaveringly by Ukraine’s side” and how “we must put Ukraine in a position of strength”.
World
A gift any Russian leader could only dream of is in Putin’s grasp – a NATO without US military support
In a strictly military sense, the war in Ukraine is not going so badly for Kyiv.
Russian territorial gains on the ground have slowed to a crawl since last November for which they are losing, on average, some 1,500 men every day.
They have almost – but still not quite – taken Toretsk. And after months of being on the verge of overwhelming the other key strategic towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk, Russian forces still remain outside them.
Russia’s massive air bombing campaign against the Ukrainian power grid, its critical infrastructure and civilian targets has not brought Kyiv to its knees, though this has been far and away the toughest winter of Russia’s air offensive against Ukraine.
And in the Black Sea, Ukraine has chased the Russian navy away from its western waters and thus kept its vital shipping routes open from the Odesa ports to the Mediterranean and the Danube Basin. This is a strategic battle Ukraine has unquestionably won.
But with so much material help from Iran, North Korea and China, Russia is obviously prepared to carry on the war, even though on current trends, its own economy will be pretty shaky by the end of this year.
If Western powers, particularly the United States, continued with their previous levels of support, then Ukraine could carry on as well, if it were minded to keep fighting, even with its more limited pool of manpower.
But the battlefield doesn’t matter much any more. The political ground has dramatically shifted under Kyiv and its principal backers in Europe.
The US seems to have suddenly reversed its position under President Trump, and it is driving Ukraine into a very rapid, so-called ‘peace deal’. Serious negotiations have not yet begun, but top US decision-makers seem to want to give Moscow more than it could ever have dreamed of when its “special military operation” in Ukraine went so spectacularly wrong three years ago.
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Three years of war in Ukraine
Moscow now feels it has a very good chance of keeping all its military gains, getting even parts of the Ukrainian regions it hasn’t yet conquered, getting some relief from sanctions, US investment in its economy and re-entry into the G7, which would go back to being a G8.
It will also be making demands on what Kyiv will and will not be allowed to do and what NATO should do to “reassure” Moscow that it won’t have to invade anyone else in an act of self-defence.
Most of all, the US is holding out the tantalizing prospect to Russia that NATO’s “transatlantic dimension” may be militarily finished under the Trump administration. That implies that if the Europeans end up fighting Russia in the future, the US will stand aside.
That prospect is the greatest free gift Washington could ever give Moscow.
Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, even Gorbachev and Yeltsin, fervently wished for it but never even got close. Putin may feel it is now within his grasp, whatever happens next in Ukraine.
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