2023 was hottest yr on report as Earth nears vital 1.5°C threshold | EUROtoday

Issued on: 09/01/2024 – 15:37Modified: 09/01/2024 – 15:35

3 min

Climate change intensified heatwaves, droughts and wildfires throughout the planet, and pushed the worldwide thermometer 1.48 C above the preindustrial benchmark, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.

“It is also the first year with all days over one degree warmer than the pre-industrial period,” mentioned Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

“Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”

Nearly half the yr exceeded the 1.5C restrict, past which local weather impacts usually tend to turn into self-reinforcing and catastrophic, in line with scientists.

But even when Earth’s common floor temperature breaches 1.5C in 2024, as some scientists predict, it doesn’t imply the world has failed to satisfy the Paris Agreement goal of capping world warming beneath that threshold.

That would happen solely after a number of successive years above the 1.5C benchmark, and even then the 2015 treaty permits for the potential of decreasing Earth’s temperature after a interval of “overshoot”.

2023 noticed huge fires in Canada, excessive droughts within the Horn of Africa or the Middle East, unprecedented summer season heatwaves in Europe, the United States and China, together with report winter heat in Australia and South America.

“Such events will continue to get worse until we transition away from fossil fuels and reach net-zero emissions,” mentioned University of Reading local weather change professor Ed Hawkins, who didn’t contribute to the report.

“We will continue to suffer the consequences of our inactions today for generations.”

The Copernicus findings come one month after a local weather settlement was reached at COP28 in Dubai calling for the gradual transition away from fossil fuels, the primary reason for local weather warming.

“We desperately need to rapidly cut fossil fuel use and reach net-zero to preserve the liveable climate that we all depend on,” mentioned John Marsham, atmospheric science professor on the University of Leeds.

The yr noticed one other ominous report: two days in November 2023 exceeded the preindustrial benchmark by greater than two levels Celsius.

Copernicus predicted that the 12-month interval ending in January or February 2024 would “exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level”.

Oceans in Overdrive

Reliable climate information date again to 1850, however older proxy knowledge for local weather change — from tree rings, ice cores and sediment — present that 2023 temperatures “exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years”, Burgess mentioned.

Records have been damaged on each continent. In Europe, 2023 was the second-warmest yr on report, at 0.17°C cooler than 2020.

2023 noticed the start of a naturally occurring El Nino climate phenomenon, which warms waters within the southern Pacific and stokes hotter climate past.

The phenomenon is anticipated to achieve its peak in 2024, and is linked to the eight consecutive months of report warmth from June to December.

Ocean temperatures globally have been additionally “persistently and unusually high”, with many seasonal information damaged since April.

Soaring CO2 and methane

These unprecedented ocean temperatures triggered marine heatwaves devastating to aquatic life and boosted the depth of storms.

Oceans take up greater than 90 % of extra warmth brought on by human exercise, and play a significant position in regulating Earth’s local weather.

Rising temperatures have additionally accelerated the melting of ice cabinets -– frozen ridges that assist forestall huge glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica from slipping into the ocean and elevating sea ranges.

Antarctic sea ice hit record-low ranges in 2023.

“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”, mentioned Carlo Buontempo, C3S director.

In 2023, carbon dioxide and methane concentrations reached report ranges of 419 elements per million, and 1,902 elements per billion, respectively.

Methane is the second largest contributor to world warming after CO2, and is chargeable for round 30 % of the rise in world temperatures because the industrial revolution, in line with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).