The National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States predicts that 2023 may be the hottest year ever recorded worldwide, with a probability greater than 99%, announced this Friday after a month of September with record temperatures in the northern hemisphere. "There is a greater than 99% probability that 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded," the US organization said this Friday. The "fateful prediction" comes weeks before world leaders meet in Dubai in November for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), an event in which they will address the future of fossil fuels, considered as the main culprits of global warming, explained the AFP news agency. September was the hottest month in 174 years of global records, according to NOAA data, while the European Copernicus Observatory confirmed the same record in early October. "September 2023 was the fourth consecutive month with record temperatures," NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick said in a statement. In this sense, he specified that "not only was it the hottest September on record, but it was also the most atypically hot" in the agency's records. "To put it another way, September 2023 was warmer than the average July from 2001 to 2010," Kapnick added. The global temperature in September was 1.44 degrees above the 20th century average, according to the US agency. Meanwhile, the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Program also estimated - in early September - that 2023 would probably be the hottest year in history.