The summer may not be over, but it’s already the hottest one on record and is making 2023 a strong contender to be a record-breaking year. Data from the European Union Climate Change Service, also known as Copernicus, showed the three months from June through August surpassed previous records by a large margin, with an average temperature of 16.8 C — 0.66 C above average. Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Climate Change Canada, said it “totally annihilated any previous summer.” He says the warmth is continuing into September around the world, even as the global weather pattern El Niño, linked to the warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, grows. …modern temperature records only go back to 1850, but based on evidence such as tree rings and ice cores, “this could very well be the warmest year in 120,000 years — essentially since human beings have been on planet Earth.”