Planet Earth broke temperature records, almost exceeded the agreed warming limit and showed other signs of warming in 2023, the European climate agency reported on Tuesday.
The average temperature last year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in the pre-industrial era, according to the European space and climate data agency Copernicus. That’s just shy of the 1.5°C the world had aimed for under the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, in order to avoid the most severe effects of global warming.
And January 2024 is on track to be so hot that for the first time, a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5°C limit, Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess said. Scientists maintain that the planet would need to have an average warming of 1.5°C over two to three decades to be technically in violation of the limit.
The 1.5°C warming goal “has to be maintained because lives are at risk and there are decisions that will have to be made,” Burgess said, “and those decisions won’t affect you or me, but they will affect our people.” children and grandchildren”.
Record heat wreaked havoc and sometimes even deaths in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year. But scientists also warn that atmospheric warming is causing extreme weather events, such as the prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa, the torrential downpours that destroyed dams and killed thousands of people in Libya, and the forest fires in Canada that polluted the air since North America to Europe. For the first time, countries meeting at the annual United Nations climate conference in December agreed to transition away from the hydrocarbons that are causing climate change, but did not set concrete requirements for doing so.
Copernicus estimates that the average global temperature in 2023 was about one-sixth of 1°C (0.3°F) higher than the previous record set in 2016. While this seems like a tiny amount in the context of global records, it is a margin exceptionally large for a record, Burgess said. The average global temperature in 2023 was 14.98°C (58.96°F), Copernicus calculates.
“Records were broken for seven months. We had the hottest June, July, August, September, October, November, December,” Burgess said. “It wasn’t just one season or just one month that was exceptional. “It was exceptional for more than half the year.”
There are several factors that contributed to 2023 being the hottest year on record, but by far the biggest was greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, Burgess said. These gases come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Source: With information from AP
