October began with temperature records.

The month of October has started strongly from a meteorological perspective. This year's October has been the warmest in Spain since the beginning of record-keeping, as announced by the national meteorological agency of the country (AEMET). Nearly 40% of the Spanish weather stations recorded maximum temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius. Spaniards have experienced a summer with four heatwaves spread over 24 days, part of a global pattern of rising temperatures largely attributed to human activities. "In most of the Iberian Peninsula, temperatures from October 1st have been seven to 14 degrees Celsius above normal values for this time of the year," said AEMET spokesperson Ruben del Campo, who added that nearly 100 local records were broken on Sunday. Two cities in central-southern Spain, Badajoz and Montoro, broke the record for October temperatures in mainland Spain by reaching 38 degrees Celsius and 38.2 degrees Celsius, respectively. The previous record was 37.5 degrees Celsius, set in the city of Marbella in October 2014. The meteorological station in the legendary Retiro Park in Madrid, which has a century-old history, matched its record for October, which was 30 degrees Celsius and was set in 1930. "The footprint of climate change is evident in the fact that such warm periods are now more frequent and more intense," said Ruben del Campo to Spanish public television (TVE). He added that future summers could not only be hotter but also longer, extending into the middle of the traditional milder and rainier fall season.

On a similar note, but in a different region, the average temperature recorded in September in the United Kingdom equaled the record value for that month set in 2006, "practically impossible" without human-induced climate change, according to meteorologists from the Met Office. They, citing provisional statistics, indicated that the average temperature for the month of September 2023, at 15.2 degrees Celsius, matched a record set in 2006. This is the highest temperature recorded in September since record-keeping began in 1884. "The temperature in September 2023 was substantially influenced by climate change, and our attribution study shows how this figure would have been practically impossible in a climate without human-induced greenhouse gas emissions," said Jennifer Pirret, lead researcher at the Met Office, as quoted in a statement. "The temperatures this September are still somewhat unlikely and required the right combination of large-scale conditions and meteorological models, but climate change contributed to this," she added. Furthermore, the past month saw the hottest day of 2023 so far, despite September being wetter than usual, with the UK experiencing nearly a third more rainfall compared to average precipitation values. Climatologists have stated that record temperatures will become more frequent in the UK in the coming years.