That this year will be the warmest ever recorded is now pretty much unavoidable: the last two months of 2023 are extremely unlikely to reverse the trend and high temperatures around the world have continued into November.
October was not quite as unusually hot as September but still breaks the record for the month by an "exceptional" margin, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The month was 1.7C warmer than the pre-industrial average - meaning compared with the period before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.
It is being supplemented this year by the rise of El Niño - a natural event where warm waters come to the surface in the east Pacific Ocean and release extra heat into the atmosphere.
The year to date has been a record 1.43C warmer than the pre-industrial levels according to Copernicus, with temperatures expected to remain high in the coming months.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that a combination of its data and that of the UN suggested 2023 may be "warmer than anything that the planet has seen for 125,000 years".
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