The Last 12 Months Have Been the Hottest on Record

It's virtually certain that 2023 will be the warmest year ever in the instrumental temperature record.

Earth just recorded its hottest 12-month streak (from November 2022 to October 2023) with respect to the preindustrial (1850–1900) baseline, according to researchers at Climate Central. "Most of this warming, about 1.28ºC, results from human-induced climate change, with natural variation in the climate caused by processes such as the ongoing ocean-warming event El Niño contributing much less, says climate researcher Friederike Otto at Imperial College London," according to Nature.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service basically concurs. Its researchers report that October 2023 was the warmest October in its global temperature record, which goes back to 1940. The average surface air temperature rose 0.85°C above the 1991–2020 average for October and was 1.7°C above the average for the pre-industrial reference period. October 2023 "marked the fifth consecutive month of record temperatures globally," per Copernicus.

The year 2023 from January to October was 0.1°C warmer than the 10-month average for 2016, "currently the warmest calendar year on record, and 1.43°C warmer than the pre-industrial reference period," Copernicus reported.

The satellite temperature record by University of Alabama in Huntsville researchers also notes that "the global atmospheric temperature anomaly increased slightly in October from the record value observed in September to +0.93°C (+1.67°F) above the 30-year average, setting a new anomaly record for the 45-year satellite era."

"October 2023 has seen exceptional temperature anomalies, following on from four months of global temperature records being obliterated," observed Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43ºC above the preindustrial average."