Data Munching | The numbers don’t lie: the Earth is warming, and rapidly
We have breached the 1.5-degree Celsius mark of global average temperatures on 35 days of this year already
Earth is running a fever, and the latest temperature readings aren’t offering much comfort. Last week, climate data released by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, better known as C3S, presented another warning about the impending climate crisis hovering over humanity — for the first time in recorded human history, 12 consecutive months saw temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial years.
But to understand the real magnitude of the crisis, let’s take a deeper look at what this data shows.
C3S data showed that the 12 months leading to February 2024 — the period between February 2023 to January 2024 — saw warming of 1.52 degrees Celsius above the 19th-century benchmark dubbed the “pre-industrial average”, the period between 1850 and 1900, considered by scientists as the baseline to track changes in global temperature, as the pace at which greenhouse emissions entered the atmosphere accelerated due to the use of fossil fuels.
It added that this surge in temperature comes on the back of storms, drought and fire that have lashed the planet as climate change, supercharged by the naturally occurring El Nino phenomenon, stoked record warming in 2023, making it likely the hottest calendar year in the past 100,000 years.
The 1.5-degree Celcius mark first entered our consciousness thanks to the Paris Treaty adopted in 2015 by nearly 200 countries to limit global temperature increase to that extent, and that extent alone. However, despite last year’s average temperatures, we cannot say that the 1.5 degree Celcius mark has been breached, as this requires measurement that spans several decades and not just one year. Nevertheless, it is a stark warning for how rapidly the world is barrelling towards breaching that threshold.
Now back to what the data says about the magnitude of the crisis at hand.
A month-by-month segregation of the data from the analysis period shows that average temperatures in six of the last seven months were above the 1.5°C threshold. These are July 2023, September 2023, October 2023, November 2023, December 2023, and January 2023. Two months – March 2023 and August 2023 – barely missed the 1.5°C threshold, clocking in at an average of 1.49°C over the month.
Chart 1
Establishing a trend from this appears rather straightforward — all of the months exceeding the 1.5°C threshold come in the second half of 2023 when El Nino (a climate phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that is characterised by unusual warming of its surface waters) had set in. The lone month in the second half of the year, August, that did not breach the mark missed it by a hundredth of a degree.
Disaggregating it even further, i.e., by looking at the average temperature day by day, lends further insight as to how the rise was not so much an anomaly, but a clear and steady one. This phenomenon has also carried forward into 2024, which means that the year has started far ahead of what 2023 did.
Chart 2
Another interesting aspect that comes forward in disaggregation is that we are able to quantify the change in temperature better.
Looking at data through the first half of 2023, for instance, in the 181 days between January 1 and July 30, the daily global average surface level temperature was above 1.5°C for 17 days. This means that the world saw the 1.5°C mark breached on around 9% of days in the first half of the year.
In the 184 days between July 1 and December 31, however, the same limit was breached for more than 148 days. In other words, a little over 80% of all days in the second half of 2023 saw the 1.5°C global warming threshold breached.
This trend worsens when we look at the first 38 days of 2024 (for which this data is available and analysis possible). Only three days this year — incidentally, just one spell between January 12 and January 14 where the average global temperature saw a very marginal dip to 1.46°C, 1.44°C and 1.48°C — have so far been below the 1.5°C mark. The global average on the remaining 35 has been consistently above the mark.
Such a disaggregation of data makes it apparent that the average global temperature is making a near-constant upward climb. While some days may offer temporary dips, the overall trend is undeniable: the planet is warming, and quickly.
This isn’t just a scientific observation; it’s a call to action. The warming trend demands urgent measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change. The time for action is now, and the data serves as a stark reminder of the stakes involved.
The implications are far-reaching. Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and disruptions to ecosystems are just a few of the potential consequences. While the data presented here focuses on temperatures, it's a crucial piece in understanding the larger picture of the climate crisis.
Jamie Mullick, HT News Editor, analyses a data set to put forth an in-depth analysis of news that matters
Earth is running a fever, and the latest temperature readings aren’t offering much comfort. Last week, climate data released by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, better known as C3S, presented another warning about the impending climate crisis hovering over humanity — for the first time in recorded human history, 12 consecutive months saw temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial years.
But to understand the real magnitude of the crisis, let’s take a deeper look at what this data shows.
C3S data showed that the 12 months leading to February 2024 — the period between February 2023 to January 2024 — saw warming of 1.52 degrees Celsius above the 19th-century benchmark dubbed the “pre-industrial average”, the period between 1850 and 1900, considered by scientists as the baseline to track changes in global temperature, as the pace at which greenhouse emissions entered the atmosphere accelerated due to the use of fossil fuels.
It added that this surge in temperature comes on the back of storms, drought and fire that have lashed the planet as climate change, supercharged by the naturally occurring El Nino phenomenon, stoked record warming in 2023, making it likely the hottest calendar year in the past 100,000 years.
The 1.5-degree Celcius mark first entered our consciousness thanks to the Paris Treaty adopted in 2015 by nearly 200 countries to limit global temperature increase to that extent, and that extent alone. However, despite last year’s average temperatures, we cannot say that the 1.5 degree Celcius mark has been breached, as this requires measurement that spans several decades and not just one year. Nevertheless, it is a stark warning for how rapidly the world is barrelling towards breaching that threshold.
Now back to what the data says about the magnitude of the crisis at hand.
A month-by-month segregation of the data from the analysis period shows that average temperatures in six of the last seven months were above the 1.5°C threshold. These are July 2023, September 2023, October 2023, November 2023, December 2023, and January 2023. Two months – March 2023 and August 2023 – barely missed the 1.5°C threshold, clocking in at an average of 1.49°C over the month.
Chart 1
Establishing a trend from this appears rather straightforward — all of the months exceeding the 1.5°C threshold come in the second half of 2023 when El Nino (a climate phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that is characterised by unusual warming of its surface waters) had set in. The lone month in the second half of the year, August, that did not breach the mark missed it by a hundredth of a degree.
Disaggregating it even further, i.e., by looking at the average temperature day by day, lends further insight as to how the rise was not so much an anomaly, but a clear and steady one. This phenomenon has also carried forward into 2024, which means that the year has started far ahead of what 2023 did.
Chart 2
Another interesting aspect that comes forward in disaggregation is that we are able to quantify the change in temperature better.
Looking at data through the first half of 2023, for instance, in the 181 days between January 1 and July 30, the daily global average surface level temperature was above 1.5°C for 17 days. This means that the world saw the 1.5°C mark breached on around 9% of days in the first half of the year.
In the 184 days between July 1 and December 31, however, the same limit was breached for more than 148 days. In other words, a little over 80% of all days in the second half of 2023 saw the 1.5°C global warming threshold breached.
This trend worsens when we look at the first 38 days of 2024 (for which this data is available and analysis possible). Only three days this year — incidentally, just one spell between January 12 and January 14 where the average global temperature saw a very marginal dip to 1.46°C, 1.44°C and 1.48°C — have so far been below the 1.5°C mark. The global average on the remaining 35 has been consistently above the mark.
Such a disaggregation of data makes it apparent that the average global temperature is making a near-constant upward climb. While some days may offer temporary dips, the overall trend is undeniable: the planet is warming, and quickly.
This isn’t just a scientific observation; it’s a call to action. The warming trend demands urgent measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change. The time for action is now, and the data serves as a stark reminder of the stakes involved.
The implications are far-reaching. Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and disruptions to ecosystems are just a few of the potential consequences. While the data presented here focuses on temperatures, it's a crucial piece in understanding the larger picture of the climate crisis.
Jamie Mullick, HT News Editor, analyses a data set to put forth an in-depth analysis of news that matters