• July climate crisis breaks air and ocean temperature record

Several European countries such as Spain, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Denmark or Poland registered record temperatures throughout the month of September, with the maximum of 45.7 degrees of the continent in Montoro (Córdoba) in the first week of the month.


The "extreme" summer has given way to unusually high temperatures at the start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. 2023 "may be virtually the hottest year ever recorded," ahead of 2016 and because of the combined effect of climate change and the El Niño phenomenon of natural warming of the Pacific, according to the organization Berkeley Earth.


In France, thermometers reached 38.8 degrees in Vienne, in the southeast of the country, in the first half of September. The average temperature for the month was 21.5 degrees, 3.5 degrees above average. The trend is maintained at the beginning of October, the 28 degrees of Paris during the weekend. "It has been an exceptional month, many monthly records have been broken and temperatures have deviated four or even six degrees above average in the last three decades," Christine Berne, a spokeswoman for Metéo-France, told the Guardian.


In Germany and Belgium, temperatures four degrees higher than usual were also recorded. David Dehenauv of Belgium's Royal Meteorological Institute certified that September was even hotter than July and August this year, which had not happened since 1961. In Poland, temperatures soared 3.6 degrees above average and marked the record of the last century.

The UK also experienced the hottest September in its history, with average maximum temperatures of 22 degrees, up from the previous record of 20.9 degrees set in 1895. At the beginning of the month, and in a last heat wave, the country exceeded 30 degrees for seven consecutive days, something totally unusual in the British Isles, which also broke its record for the hottest June at the start of summer.

Globally, July was the hottest month ever recorded, with temperatures 1.1 degrees higher than average between 1951 and 1980. On July 3 and 4, the two hottest days ever recorded on a global scale took place, with 17.01 and 17.18 degrees.

  • Belgium
  • Córdoba
  • Poland
  • Denmark
  • Austria
  • Germany
  • United Kingdom
  • France
  • Climate change