Last month marked another month of record-breaking temperatures throughout the globe, with September 2023 ranking as the warmest September in NOAA’s 174-year global climate record.

September’s temperature also helped propel 2023 into the lead as the warmest year-to-date on record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

“September 2023 was the fourth month in a row of record-warm global temperatures,” said NOAA Chief Scientist Dr. Sarah Kapnick. “Not only was it the warmest September on record, it was far and away the most atypically warm month of any in NOAA’s 174 years of climate keeping. To put it another way, September 2023 was warmer than the average July from 2001-2010.”

Below are more highlights from NOAA’s September global climate report:

Climate by the numbers

September 2023

The average global temperature for September was 2.59 degrees F (1.44 degrees C) above the 20th-century average of 59.0 degrees F (15.0 degrees C), ranking as the warmest September on record. September 2023 saw the highest monthly global temperature anomaly — which indicates how much warmer or