September 2023 warmest September on record globally: C3S

New Delhi: September 2023 was the warmest September on record globally, with a global-mean surface air temperature of 16.38°C according the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday.

“The month as a whole was around 1.75°C warmer than an estimate of the September average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period” C3S said in a statement.

It followed the warmest two months on record, July and August 2023, when the global-mean temperature reached monthly records of 16.95°C and 16.82 respectively.

Courtesy:C3S

The average global temperature for the first nine months of 2023 (January–September) is 0.52°C higher than the corresponding 1991-2020 average, and 0.05°C higher than the nine-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record.

For the calendar year to date, January to September, the global mean temperature for 2023 is 1.40°C higher than the 1850-1900 preindustrial average, it said.

The agency said the average sea surface temperature for September over 60°S–60°N reached 20.92°C, the highest on record for September and the second highest across all months, behind August 2023.

Scientists have said climate change combined with the emergence this year of the El Nino weather pattern, which warms the surface waters in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, have fueled recent record-breaking temperatures.

“El Niño conditions continued to develop over the equatorial eastern Pacific” it said.

“The unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September following a record summer have broken records by an extraordinary amount. This extreme month has pushed 2023 into the dubious honour of first place on track to be the warmest year and around 1.4C above preindustrial average temperatures”, Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of Copernicus, said in a statement.

On the sea ice extent, European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Antarctic sea ice extent remained at a record low level for the time of year.

Both the daily and monthly extents reached their lowest annual maxima in the satellite record in September, with the monthly extent 9% below average.

“The daily Arctic sea ice extent reached its 6th lowest annual minimum while the monthly sea ice extent ranked 5th lowest, at 18% below average” it said.