‘In a league of its own’: Scientists declare 2023 the world’s hottest year on record

Key PointsThe European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2023 was the hottest year on record globally.It said temperatures exceeded the previous records by a significant margin.The planet was 1.48C warmer on average in 2023 than in the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900.

Last year was the planet’s hottest on record by a substantial margin and likely the world’s warmest in the last 100,000 years, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) says.

Scientists had widely expected the milestone, after temperature records were repeatedly broken.

Since June, every month has been the world’s hottest on record compared with the corresponding month in previous years.

“This has been a very exceptional year, climate-wise… in a league of its own, even when compared to other very warm years,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo said.

C3S said 2023 was the hottest year in global temperature records going back to 1850.

Copernicus records only go back to 1940 and are based on a combination of observations and forecast models.

A heat advisory sign during a heatwave in Death Valley, California, in July 2023. Source: Getty / Ronda Churchill

Other groups, including the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office and Berkeley Earth go back to the mid-1800s and will announce their calculations for 2023 on Friday.

When checked against paleoclimatic data records from sources such as tree rings and air bubbles in glaciers, Buontempo said it was “very likely” the warmest year in the last 100,000 years.

Earth recorded its hottest European summer on record in 2023

On average, in 2023 the planet was 1.48C warmer than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming surpassing 1.5C, to avoid its most severe consequences.

The world has not breached that target – which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades – but C3S said that temperatures exceeding the level on nearly half of the days of 2023 set “a dire precedent”.

Despite the proliferation of government and company climate targets, CO2 emissions remain stubbornly high.

The world’s CO2 emissions from burning coal, oil and gas hit record levels in 2023.

Last year, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to the highest level recorded, of 419 parts per million, C3S said.

People cool off at the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. Source: AAP / Francisco Seco/AP

It was also the first year in which every day was more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times.

For the first time, two days – both of them in November – were 2C warmer than in the pre-industrial period, C3S said.

Last year was 0.17C hotter than 2016, the previous hottest year – smashing the record by a “remarkable” margin, Buontempo said.

Alongside human-caused climate change, in 2023 temperatures were boosted by the El Niño weather phenomenon, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean and contributes to higher global temperatures.

What scientists do not know yet is whether 2023’s extreme heat is a sign that global warming is accelerating.

“Whether there’s been a phase shift or a tipping point, or it’s an anomalously warm year, we need more time and more scientific studies to understand,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said.

Each fraction of temperature increase exacerbates extreme and destructive weather disasters.

In 2023, the hotter planet aggravated deadly heatwaves from China to Europe, extreme rain which caused floods killing thousands of people in Libya and Canada’s worst wildfire season on record.

“Comparable small changes in global temperatures have huge impacts on people and ecosystems,” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist who co-leads the World Weather Attribution global research collaboration, said.

“Every tenth of a degree matters,” she added.

United Nations warns of ‘catastrophic future’

The UN said last year was a mere preview of the “catastrophic future that awaits us if we don’t act now” on climate.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres believes “leaders must commit to serious new national climate action plans, end the fossil fuel age fast and fairly, and invest in helping vulnerable countries to combat climate chaos,” his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.

– With reporting by Reuters.

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