According to European Union scientists, this year is highly likely to be the warmest in the past 125,000 years. Recent data indicated that last month was the hottest October on record in that time frame.

In October, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported that last month’s temperature broke the previous record from 2019 by a significant amount.

According to C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, the October temperature anomaly was described as “very extreme” and broke the record by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a significant margin.

The rise in temperature is caused by ongoing release of greenhouse gases from human actions, along with the appearance of the El Nino weather phenomenon this year, which heats up the surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The average worldwide air temperature in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius higher compared to the same month during the period of 1850-1900, which is known as the pre-industrial era according to Copernicus.

According to a statement from C3S, the exceptionally warm October has solidified the prediction that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. The current record holder is 2016, also a year affected by El Nino.

Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said.

The extended information provided by the United Nations’ IPCC on climate science incorporates data from various sources, such as ice cores, tree rings, and coral deposits.

The last time a month exceeded the temperature record by a significant margin before October was in September 2023.

Burgess stated that September was a very surprising month. Due to this, it is difficult to determine if we have entered a new climate state after the events of last month. However, new records continue to be broken, although they are not as surprising as they were a month ago.

According to Michael Mann, a climate expert from the University of Pennsylvania, the majority of El Nino years are setting new records due to the additional global heat produced by El Nino, which compounds the ongoing trend of human-induced warming.

The changing climate is causing more and more extreme events that are causing great destruction. This year, there were severe floods in Libya resulting in the deaths of thousands, intense heatwaves in South America, and the worst recorded wildfire season in Canada.

“We cannot allow the destructive floods, wildfires, storms, and heatwaves that have occurred this year to become the expected standard,” stated Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds.

He stated that by swiftly decreasing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the next ten years, we can cut the rate of warming in half.

Although countries have been setting more ambitious goals to reduce emissions over time, this has not yet been achieved. In fact, global CO2 emissions reached a new peak in 2022.