Thermometer with Fahrenheit and Celsius units [image credit: Stilfehler at Wikipedia]
The ‘virtual’ in virtually certain is from a computer model result: ‘we combine our data with the IPCC’. Two things to bear in mind: satellite data only started in the 1970s, with other less accurate (due to shortage of data) records being kept from the 1880s onwards, and ‘the mid-Holocene … mean annual temperature reached 2.5°C above that of today’ (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday (8 November), after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period, says Euractiv.
Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.
“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.
The heat is a result of continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity [Talkshop comment – in IPCC theory], combined with the emergence this year of the El Nino weather pattern, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Globally, the average surface air temperature in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the same month in 1850-1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period.
The record-breaking October means 2023 is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest year recorded, C3S said in a statement. The previous record was 2016 – another El Nino year.
Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said.
The longer-term data from UN climate science panel IPCC includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral deposits.
The only other time before October a month breached the temperature record by such a large margin was in September 2023.
“September really, really surprised us. So after last month, it’s hard to determine whether we’re in a new climate state. But now records keep tumbling and they’re surprising me less than they did a month ago,” Burgess said.
. . .
Despite countries setting increasingly ambitious targets to gradually cut emissions, so far that has not happened. Global CO2 emissions hit a record high in 2022.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Probably it was so so cold that so many Heatpumps were switched-on and dumped their heat Outdoors to add to the UHI …. according to the Wee Bairnie telling me today ….. Was Biden bumping the gums at a COP thingy? where that slogan appeared ?
Well the UAH satellite data shows October ws very warm but I’m not seeing the 125,000 years? What’s interesting is how the UAH anomaly in January was slightly negative and stayed relatively low until July when it suddenly ramped up. In other words, nothing like CO2. And the increase was everywhere, with the Tropics going from a negative anomaly in April to a positive 1 degree in October. The US Lower 48 did the same thing. There has been very large, very widespread warming since May that is very unlikely to be climate change. But of course climate science isn’t looking for any other culprit.
This is not science, it is literally made up in models that immediately show how wrong they are when compared to the multiple records of actual temperature in the past, established in multiple proxy datasets well known in geology. As is noted in the commentary, the Holocene optimum was 2 to 3° warmer than now, and that was only 3,000 years ago. So this paper is complete rubbish at the most basic level of review, written by people with no knowledge of earth’s historic climate. How can the scientific press allow people who overtly demonstrate they have no relevant understanding of the subject to publish such nonsense? Who peer-reviewed this? It’s science, Jim, but not as we know it. CEng, CPhys
This is how it works:
‘The longer-term data from UN climate science panel IPCC includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral deposits.’
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The ‘readings’ they liked the look of? That’s alright then 😣
Bollocks!
It Mike Mann’s trick all over again. Take modern temperature readings from instruments sampling daily and claim they’re higher than readings from proxies with centennial or millennial resolution. Who knows what daily readings might have shown thousands of years ago?
But we can compare like with like, as for example:
Moberg is a reliable NH temperature reconstruction and Kouwenberg is a plant stomata dataset with higher resolution than ice cores. Note that temperatures change about 200 years before CO2 changes.
Yes, October was very warm. No, it almost certainly wasn’t the warmest October in 125k years. No, it was not caused by CO2 and a rather puny El Nino. No, it was not caused by a sudden dearth of man-made aerosols. They keep lying and they keep distracting in order to avoid admitting the obvious, because that would completely destroy their ‘global boiling’ narrative.
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/zeke-hausfather-record-heat-in-2023
A virtual certainty is at home in virtual reality.
Temporary effect at work…
The ONI (AugSepOct) has only just reached 1.5 (strong) and NCEP models predict it has peaked and will start to decline. El Nino cannot be the cause of the sharp rise in GMST beginning July 2023. Tropospheric wv from El Nino will add to warmth in the following months but should disperse in Spring. Hunga Tonga wv is in the stratosphere and will disperse much more slowly (over the next couple of years).
Worth a read. I’ll be buying the book.
Panama Canal drought hits new crisis level with nearly half of vessel traffic targeted for cuts
PUBLISHED FRI, NOV 3 2023
“This will be the worst El Niño recorded in recent history,” Panama Canal Authority Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales recently said.
. . .
Starting Friday, the Panama Canal Authority is implementing additional vessel reductions in an effort to conserve water as a drought exacerbated by a severe El Niño weather system continues to plague water levels in the locks of the key global trade conduit.
According to Panama Canal authorities, the drought requires them to reduce the number of daily transits from 29 to 25 ships and in the proceeding weeks, they will reduce vessels transits even more until it declines to 18 ships a day in February. That represents between 40%-50% of full capacity. Under normal conditions, between 34-36 vessels traversed the canal daily. The drought and vessel reductions are having a major impact on the flow of trade, according to data from CNBC Supply Chain providers. [bold added]
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/03/panama-canal-drought-hits-new-crisis-level-amid-severe-el-nino.html
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What evidence of ‘severe El Niño’ do they have?
Telegraph: How unpredictable weather is squeezing the arteries of global trade
Shipping costs are climbing as the world grapples with the effects of climate change
10 November 2023
As well as reducing the number of ships that pass through, canal authorities have also reduced the amount that the ships can carry to maintain a minimum gap beneath the keel of the ships and the bottom of the canal.
“Some ships are already carrying 40pc less,” says David Jinks, head of consumer research at Parcel Hero.
The significance of the disruption should not be underestimated: around 5pc of all goods that are shipped around the world travel through the Panama Canal.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/10/unpredictable-weather-squeezing-global-trade-panama-canal/
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The canal system causes its own problems to some extent:
Ships travel through the canal using a system of freshwater locks. Each vessel that passes through the canal uses more than 50 million gallons of water, which comes primarily from Lake Gatun. But Lake Gatun is drying out.
Using seawater “would be a total ecological disaster”.
Mexico has a plan, of sorts:
Mexican president says rail alternative to Panama Canal will open in December
Lopez Obrador points to ‘saturation’ and water problems at 100-year-old waterway
17 October 2023
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec will be inaugurated on 22 December.
He said rail lines now connect the port of Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz state on the Gulf of Mexico with Salina Cruz, in the state of Oaxaca on the Atlantic in six hours and 20 minutes.
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/ports/mexican-president-says-rail-alternative-to-panama-canal-will-open-in-december/2-1-1536744
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