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September heat record 'beyond belief': EU monitor
We are now "pretty close" to hitting the 2015 Paris Agreement warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
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People look at a firefighting helicopter filling water from a pool, as a wildfire burns in the village of Gennadi, on the island of Rhodes, Greece, on July 25, 2023. (Reuters/Nicolas Economou)
R
ecord-high September temperatures are "beyond belief" as our world hurtles towards breaching a key warming benchmark, the head of the European Union's climate monitor told AFP.
We are now "pretty close" to hitting the 2015 Paris Agreement warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the key findings for September?
"We've been through the most incredible September ever from a climate point of view. It's just beyond belief.
"It's not new this year: we got a record-breaking June, July and August. September fits very nicely in this extreme pattern.
"It's half a degree above the warmest September until now, which was 2020. Now we are in a different realm... the largest anomaly we have ever seen for any month in our record.
"The entire trajectory and the massive loss of sea ice in Antarctica is also part of that.
"We have never seen anything like this, not only in my professional experience, but in living memory and in all likelihood in our history as human beings on this planet.
"Climate change is not something that will happen ten years from now. Climate change is here."
What is driving the record heat?
"There are a number of compounding factors. The El Nino certainly plays a role by increasing the temperature of the Pacific and other natural phenomena may have also exacerbated the warming.
"The anomaly wasn't isolated to the Pacific, so it's not just El Nino. The Atlantic has been incredibly warm with heatwaves in June and July... The large sea ice loss in Antarctica may have also contributed.
"But there's no doubt that climate change has made it much worse it would have been otherwise. To a large extent, we're seeing this because of anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change."
Should we be surprised?
"The projections have done the job in informing us of what we could have expected. So in that sense, what you're seeing is not unexpected.
"But the speed of some of the changes as well as the anomaly we've seen this year took many scientists by surprise.
"Many scientists do their job because they want to understand. And so being surprised is a driver.
"But similarly, it is important to stress the fact that actually we were not blind, that what we were expecting 20 years ago for the 2020s is what we are seeing to a large extent."
Will we breach 1.5C this year?
"It's not a given that it will reach 1.5, but we are pretty close to it. If it's not this year, it may be the next.
"But as the WMO (UN World Meteorological Organization) made (clear) in the statement in the spring, it's very likely that over the next five years the world will reach 1.5 for a whole year.
"And the fact that this year, the first year after that statement, we are so close to it is quite telling."
