Just like 2020’s January and May, September hottest on record

First it was January, then May, and now September. New data by the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme showed on Wednesday that last month was the world’s hottest September on record, with unusually high temperatures recorded off Siberia, in the Middle East and in parts of South America and Australia. It means that this year has now seen three months of record warmth, while June and April were virtually tied for first, according to the programme’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Globally, September was 0.05 degrees Celsius warmer than the same month in 2019 and 0.08C warmer than in 2016, previously the warmest and second warmest Septembers on record, C3S said. Over the final three months of 2020, climate events such as the La Nina phenomenon and projected low levels of autumn Arctic sea ice will influence whether the year as a whole will become the warmest on record. “As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense,” Copernicus’s senior scientist Freja Vamborg told Reuters news agency, pointing to heat waves and periods of intense rain as examples of this. Extending a long-term warming trend caused by emissions of heat-trapping gases, high temperatures this year have played a major role in disasters from fires in California and the Arctic to floods in Asia, scientists say. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">