October is a time for pumpkin spice lattes, scarves—and record-breaking heat. Yup, October 2019 was the hottest October ever documented, but c’mon, does that surprise anyone anymore?
The Copernicus Union Climate Change Service managed by the European Union announced these findings Tuesday, noting that this year’s October was 0.69 degrees Celsius warmer than the global average between 1981 and 2010. This latest record-breaker comes after September 2019 broke records and July 2019 was crowned the hottest month in Earth’s recorded history.
This is our world now: a never-ending list of record-breaking temperatures. Helloooo, global warming!
This October record, though, isn’t that much worse than the last hot October. It beat October 2015 by a mere 0.01 degrees Celsius. Perhaps October 2020 will show them who’s truly hot shit. This time, at least, the heat was felt around the world for the most part. Eastern parts of Europe felt it. So did the Arctic and most of eastern Antarctica, which is always bad news. Above-average temperatures also hit southern Brazil, southern Africa, and western and southern Australia.
Meanwhile, parts of the western U.S. and Canada saw below-average temperatures. Good for them, I guess, but so long as global temperatures continue to rise, the world as we know it is doomed.
Luckily, scientists just put out a climate emergency declaration with proposals that could help us reverse course. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump just formally withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, aka the only hope left to push world leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Everything is just fine.