Scientists warn that 2023 will be the hottest year in the last 125,000 years. The maximum temperatures measured exceeded the previous record from 2016, when the El Niño phenomenon also occurred.
European Union (EU) scientists have warned that 2023 “Pretty sure“The hottest year in the last 125,000 years, after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October during that period.”
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Fund (C3S) found last month that the previous temperature record set in October 2019 had been significantly broken.
“The record was beaten by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge differencesaid C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess, who also described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme“. The heat is the result of continued human emissions of greenhouse gases combined with the onset of the El Niño climate phenomenon this year, which caused surface waters in the eastern Pacific to warm.
The El Niño phenomenon
Let’s remember that El Niño is a natural weather pattern that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean and results in above-average increases in sea surface temperatures and has a major impact on the climate around the world, affecting billions of people.
Warmer seawater is generally confined to the western Pacific as east-west winds push warmer water toward Indonesia and Australia.
Because of this phenomenon, it is possible that 2023 will be the hottest year on record.
Hottest year compared to pre-industrial times
Globally, average surface air temperatures in October were 1.7 degrees Celsius higher than the same month in the period 1850-1900, which C3S defines as pre-industrial.
October record means 2023 “Pretty sure“The warmest year on record,” C3S said in a statement. The previous record was set in 2016, another El Niño year.
The C3S data set dates back to 1940.”If we combine our data with that of the IPCC, we can confirm that this is the warmest year in the last 125,000 yearssaid Burgess, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC’s long-term data includes data from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral sediments.
The only time before October that there was a month with such a significant temperature record was September 2023.
“September really surprised us. Therefore, after the last month, it is difficult to say whether we are facing a new climate condition or not. But now the records continue to fall and they surprise me compared to less than a month agosaid Burgess.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, said: “Most El Niño years are record-breaking because global warming caused by El Niño amplifies steady human-caused warming.“.
Climate change is leading to increasingly devastating extreme events. This year saw floods in Libya that killed thousands of people, extreme heat in South America and the worst wildfire season on record in Canada.
“We cannot allow this year’s devastating floods, wildfires, storms and heatwaves to become the new normalsaid Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. “If we reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly over the next decade, we can halve the rate of warming“he added.
Although countries are setting increasingly ambitious targets to gradually reduce emissions, this has not yet happened. In 2023, global CO2 emissions will reach record levels.
With information from: