Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world바카라s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday.
In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That바카라s barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.
And January 2024 is on track to be so warm that for the first time a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5-degree threshold, Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said. Scientists have repeatedly said that Earth would need to average 1.5 degrees of warming over two or three decades to be a technical breach of the threshold.
The 1.5 degree goal 바카라has to be (kept) alive because lives are at risk and choices have to be made,바카라 Burgess said. 바카라And these choices don바카라t impact you and I but they impact our children and our grandchildren.바카라
The record heat made life miserable and sometimes deadly in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year. But scientists say a warming climate is also to blame for more extreme weather events, like the lengthy drought that devastated the Horn of Africa, the torrential downpours that wiped out dams and killed thousands in Libya and the Canada wildfires that fouled the air from North America to Europe. For the first time, nations meeting for annual United Nations climate talks in December agreed that the world needs to transition away from the fossil fuels that are causing climate change, but they set no concrete requirements to do so.
Extreme heat represents a new threat to trees and plants in the Pacific Northwest
Copernicus calculated that the global average temperature for 2023 was about one-sixth of a degree Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the old record set in 2016. While that seems a small amount in global record-keeping, it바카라s an exceptionally large margin for the new record, Burgess said. Earth바카라s average temperature for 2023 was 14.98 degrees Celsius (58.96 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus calculated.
바카라It was record-breaking for seven months. We had the warmest June, July, August, September, October, November, December,바카라 Burgess said. 바카라It wasn바카라t just a season or a month that was exceptional. It was exceptional for over half the year.바카라
There are several factors that made 2023 the warmest year on record, but by far the biggest factor was the ever-increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, Burgess said. Those gases come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Other factors including the natural El Nino 바카라 a temporary warming of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide 바카라 other natural oscillations in the Arctic, southern and Indian oceans, increased solar activity and the 2022 eruption of an undersea volcano that sent water vapor into the atmosphere, Burgess said.
Malte Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist, said about 1.3 degrees Celsius of the warming comes from greenhouse gases, with another 0.1 degrees Celsius from El Nino and the rest being smaller causes.
Given El Nino and record ocean heat levels, Burgess said it바카라s 바카라extremely likely바카라 that 2024 will be even hotter than 2023.
Copernicus records only go back to 1940 and are based on a combination of observations and forecast models. Other groups, including the United States바카라 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, the United Kingdom바카라s Meteorological Office and Berkeley Earth go back to the mid-1800s and will announce their calculations for 2023 on Friday, with expectations of record-breaking marks.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency, which uses similar techniques as Copernicus and goes back to 1948, late last month estimated that it was the warmest year at 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.64 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The University of Alabama Huntsville global dataset, which uses satellite measurements rather than ground data and dates to 1979, last week also found it the hottest year on record, but not by as much.
Though actual observations only date back less than two centuries, several scientists say evidence from tree rings and ice cores suggest this is the warmest the Earth has been in more than 100,000 years.
바카라2023 was probably hottest year on Earth in about 125,000 years,바카라 said Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist Jennifer Francis. 바카라Humans were around before that but it바카라s certainly fair to say it바카라s the hottest since humans became civilized, depending on the definition of 바카라civilized.바카라 바카라
Amid record hot months were days that were downright unprecedented hot across the globe.
For the first time, Copernicus recorded a day where the world averaged at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) more than pre-industrial times. It happened twice and narrowly missed a third day around Christmas, Burgess said.
And for the first time, every day of the year was at least one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. For nearly half the year 바카라 173 days 바카라 the world was 1.5 degrees warmer than the mid-1800s.
Meinshausen, the Australian climate scientist, said it바카라s natural for the public to wonder whether the 1.5-degree target is lost. He said it바카라s important for people to keep trying to rein in warming.
바카라We are not abolishing a speed limit, because somebody exceeded the speed limit,바카라 he said. 바카라We double our efforts to step on the brakes.바카라
