Nature
PUBLISHED
2
Last month slides in among the hottest of Octobers since records began, according to a new analysis by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Around the world, October clocked in at 0.69°C warmer than the average October between 1981 and 2010, surpassing the previous record holders of October 2015 by 0.01°C and 2017 by 0.09°C. It comes after September and August of this year tied with previous records set, while June and July both shattered the 140-year temperature record.
“Averaging over twelve-month periods smooths out the shorter-term variations. Globally, the twelve-month period from November 2018 to October 2019 was 0.56°C warmer than the 1981-2010 average. The warmest twelve-month period was from October 2015 to September 2016, with a temperature 0.66°C above average,” wrote the CCS in their review.
Overall, 2016 is still the warmest calendar year on record, followed by 2017 and then 2018.
“The spread in the global averages from various temperature datasets has been relatively large over the past three years,” says C3S. This is due in part to differences in how datasets represent relatively warm conditions over the Antarctic and Antarctic, as well as those of sea-surface temperatures.
C3S is a program designated under the European Union to offer open-access data on climate tools for adaptation and mitigation. To come to their conclusions, researchers analyzed October 2019 temperatures from around the world and compared them against temperatures from previous Octobers. Their findings add to a growing body of evidence that the world is warming – and more consistently and faster than previously estimated. Europe can expect to see more days with more extreme heat as part of the continent’s new normal, while Antarctica has seen an uptick in stratospheric warming in recent months.
