Euronews.green reports that Austria, Belgium, France and Germany experienced significantly higher temperatures this past September, which was about 3.6 degrees Celsius warmer than the average for that month. At the same time, experts at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service expect 2023 as a whole to be humanity's hottest year so far.

Officials at Meteo-France, an institution which started recording temperatures in 1900, issued multiple heatwave alerts countrywide at the beginning of September, as 38.8 degrees Celsius was the hottest temperature ever recorded by them in the 9th month of the year.

Germany, on the other hand, experienced even warmer than normal temperatures, with the average being 17.2 degrees Celsius, almost 4 degrees hotter than the average recorded between 1961 and 1990.

Tobias Fuchs, head of the climate and environment division at the German Weather Service (DWD), said that "the extraordinary temperatures in this year's record September in Germany are further evidence that we are in the midst of climate change."

The whole of Western Europe is expected to be inside a heat dome this week, with temperatures reaching as high as 37 degrees Celsius in Portugal and 35 degrees in Spain and southwest France.

The El Niño weather event and human-induced pollution are said to be the main reasons why the planet was this hot this year and the trend is expected to continue over the next half-decade, as per the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).