Data by scientists at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS)has shown that 2023 “smashed” the record for the hottest year by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilisation developed.
The planet was 1.48C hotter in 2023 compared with the period before the mass burning of fossil fuels ignited the climate crisis. Although the global temperature would need to be consistently above 1.5C for the target to be considered broken, the figure is very close to the 1.5C temperature target set by countries in Paris in 2015.
The scientists said that it was likely that the 1.5C mark will be passed for the first time in the next 12 months.
The average temperature in 2023 was 0.17C higher than in 2016, the previous record year, marking a very large increase in climate terms. The primary cause of this increased global heating was continued record emissions of carbon dioxide, assisted by the return of the natural climate phenomenon El Niño.
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Analysis showed that some extreme weather, such as heatwaves in Europe and the US, would have been virtually impossible without human-caused global heating. This is even as the high temperatures drove heatwaves, floods and wildfires, damaging lives and livelihoods across the world.
The CCCS data also showed that 2023 was the first year on record when every day was at least 1C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial record. Almost half the days were 1.5C hotter and, for the first time, two days were more than 2C hotter. The higher temperatures increased from June, with September’s heat so far above previous averages that one scientist called it “gobsmackingly bananas”.
Reacting, Carlo Buontempo, a CCCS director, said that the extremes we have observed over the last few months provide a dramatic testimony of how far we now are from the climate in which our civilisation developed.
“This has profound consequences for the Paris agreement and all human endeavours. If we want to successfully manage our climate risk, we need to urgently decarbonise our economy whilst using climate data and knowledge to prepare for the future.”
Scientists have also been quoted as saying that the Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet was “well outside the safe operating space for humanity”. Samantha Burgess, the CCCS deputy director, said: “2023 was an exceptional year, with climate records tumbling like dominoes. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”
Prof Bill Collins, at the University of Reading, UK, said: “It is a shock that 2023 unarguably smashed the global temperature record. More global warming is expected to cause even wetter winters in the UK and yet more flooding.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
