2023 warmest year ever!

Heat records have fallen like dominoes, states the EU’s climate service Copernicus. According to them, 2023 was the warmest year recorded on Earth – 0.17 degrees above the previous record.

Extreme heat in Arizona, devastating floods in Libya and record-warming seas that caused corals off Florida to fade. These are some examples of the extreme events that are expected to get worse in the wake of climate change and that left their mark on 2023.

The year goes down in history as the warmest recorded since humans began compiling temperature data 174 years ago. Every month from June to December was slightly warmer than the corresponding month in the previous year, which is partly explained by El Niño. The weather phenomenon can temporarily raise the global average temperature by 0.1-0.2 degrees.

• 2023 was an exceptional year with climate records falling like dominoes, says Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the EU’s climate monitoring service Copernicus, in a comment.

Big increase
The global average temperature was 14.98 degrees, according to Copernicus. It is 0.17 degrees warmer than the previous record year in 2016.

• That is a big increase, says Erik Kjellström, professor of climatology at SMHI, to TT.
• The fact that 2023 was a very warm year can partly be explained by the fact that it was a year with a strong El Niño. But that is not enough to explain why it was so much warmer than normal in large parts of the world’s oceans and in many other places.

It was also the first year in which every day was more than 1 degree warmer than pre-industrial times. Almost half were over 1.5 degrees warmer and in November the global temperature was for the first time 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels for two days.

New records waiting?
The question is what awaits in 2024. If El Niño slows down, it usually affects the global temperature, which then drops.

• We will see continued global warming. 2023 clearly shows that the trend towards ever higher temperatures as a result of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues, says Kjellström.
• But that doesn’t mean that every single year will be warmer than 2023, it could be a record that will stand for a few years to come, he adds.

• Source: svt