Scorching heat waves, drought and ocean surface temperatures as warm as a hot tub were all symptoms of global heating in 2023, which the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said would be the warmest year on record.

For the January to November period of this year, the average global temperature was 1.46 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the highest ever recorded.

This year “has now had six record breaking months and two record breaking seasons. The extraordinary global November temperatures, including two days warmer than 2C above preindustrial, mean that 2023 is the warmest year in recorded history,” said Samantha Burgess, C3S deputy director, as C3S reported.

News of the record-breaking temperatures comes as delegates from nearly 200 countries are meeting at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai and discussing the potential phaseout of fossil fuels.

According to C3S, for the first 11 months of 2023, the temperature was 0.13 degrees Celsius above the mean temperature for the same time period in 2016, which currently holds the record for the warmest calendar year.

Last month was the warmest November ever recorded worldwide, with an average temperature 0.85 degrees Celsius above the average for November from 1991 to 2020, and 0.32 degrees Celsius higher than November of 2022.

The planet was feeling the heat all the way to the poles.

“Arctic sea ice extent reached its 8th lowest value for November, at 4% below average, well above the lowest November value recorded in 2016 (13% below average),” C3S said. “Antarctic sea ice extent was the second lowest for November, at 9% below average, after reaching record-low values for the time of year by large margins for six consecutive months.”

This year’s boreal autumn — September to November — was 0.88 degrees Celsius above average, the warmest for that time period ever recorded, the EU scientists said.

“Boreal autumn 2023 saw precipitation above average over a large latitudinal band across Europe, as well as over the UK and Ireland, most of Scandinavia and Türkiye. During the season, several storms triggered widespread rainfall and floods locally,” reported C3S. “In the period September to November 2023, it was drier than average over much of North America, over central and easternmost Asia as well as over most of Australia, South America and southern Africa.”

Of all the major economies in the world, the EU has had the most progressive climate change policies, Reuters reported, but overall actions are still not keeping up with what is necessary to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping the global average temperature to “well below” two degrees Celsius — ideally lower than 1.5 degrees Celsius — in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

“As long as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising, we can’t expect different outcomes from those seen this year. The temperature will keep rising and so will the impacts of heat waves and droughts,” said C3S Director Carlo Buontempo, as reported by Yale E360. “Reaching net zero as soon as possible is an effective way to manage our climate risks.”

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