Final figures now show 2023 was a record-breaking hot year. Even though many of us felt the heat last year, it’s still exciting to see these numbers. And it’s about to get even hotter.
Officially, last year was the hottest year on record since 1850. Looking back, last year’s temperatures “were probably higher than any time in at least the past 100,000 years,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Center for Climate Change.
Data released today by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms previous predictions that high temperatures in 2023 will reach record highs. The agency also made worrying predictions for the new year, predicting that the world could soon pass a critical threshold on climate change.
2023 isn’t just breaking records, it’s crushing them
2023 didn’t just break records, it shattered them, beating the previous hottest year of 2016 by a wide margin. But huge changes in the planet can depend on a fraction of a change in temperature, so bear with me while I break down some numbers.
Since the Industrial Revolution, global temperatures have risen by an average of about 1.2 degrees Celsius due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. That may not seem like a big change, but it was enough to fuel last year’s deadly heat waves in Europe, North America and China, which, according to an international collaboration, are “extremely rare and even rare” without human-caused warming. “It’s impossible,” the researchers called world weather attribution. This is just one example of the many ways climate change is exacerbating disasters around the world.
“The extreme conditions we have observed over the past few months have dramatically demonstrated how far we are now from the climate in which civilization developed. This has profound implications for the Paris Agreement and all human endeavors,” Copernicus Climate Carlo Buontempo, director of the Center for Change Services, said in a press release.
It turns out that temperatures in 2023 will actually be 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. The jump in global average temperatures is of great concern. In fact, the landmark Paris climate agreement commits nearly every country on the planet to work together to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or face an even worse climate catastrophe. This goal quickly became out of reach.
According to the latest Copernicus forecasts, temperatures are “likely” to be 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the 12 months to January or February 2024. The Met Office has also predicted that 2024 will be hotter than last year.
Even so, hope for halting climate change has not disappeared.The goal of the Paris Agreement is to avoid continued The average temperature is higher than 1.5 degrees. An El Niño weather pattern emerged in 2023, which along with greenhouse gas emissions contributed to particularly warm temperatures last year, but El Niño is expected to end later this year.
Humans can also turn off the thermostat themselves by using clean energy and reducing pollution from heating the planet. Whether the world meets global climate goals or not, every small change in one degree will have an impact on our future prospects.
