Last month hottest October on record: EU climate service
Last month was the hottest October ever recorded worldwide, according to data released by the European Union's satellite monitoring service on Tuesday.
Globally, temperatures were 0.69 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the average October from 1981 to 2010, and 0.01 C warmer than the previous record holder, October 2015.
This is equivalent to 1.2 Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a statement.
September was also a record-breaking month, and July was the hottest since temperature records began.
"With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future," Copernicus head Jean-Noel Thepaut said in July.
The EU data showed that temperatures were above average across most of Europe last month, and "markedly above average" in parts of the Arctic, the eastern parts of the United States and Canada, the Middle East and much of North Africa and Russia.
However, temperatures were below average in the western parts of the United States and Canada, parts of tropical Africa and Antarctica.
Twenty of the last 22 years have been the hottest on record, according to the UN World Meteorological Organization.
Three special reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the last year have detailed dire consequences if humanity fails to cap global warming, including deadly heat waves, flooding and storm surges amplified by rising seas.
Last month, scientists released new climate models showing that greenhouse gases are warming Earth's surface more quickly than previously thought.
The models suggested average temperatures could spike to between 6.5 and 7.0 Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, if emissions continue unabated.
© 2019 AFP
