E-Paper
2023 the warmest year on record, at cusp of 1.5°C level
It is also likely that a 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
2023 was the warmest year ever, overtaking the last record set in 2016 by a large margin, Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Tuesday citing an analysis of global temperature data records since 1850.
The year was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average, and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, barely below the 1.5°C limit the world is hoping to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of the crisis.
“2023 was an exceptional year with climate records tumbling like dominoes. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), in a statement.
The year was 0.17°C warmer than the last warmest year 2016 — an El Nino year like 2023.
But, there were several other records that the temperature anomaly either set or smashed, including every day being at least 1°C warmer than the pre-industrial period.
“Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, it is also the first year with all days over 1 degree C warmer than the pre-industrial period,” Burgess said.
It is also likely that a 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level, she said.
While the global temperature has been rising for the past few decades, the rise has not been steady.
Addressing a press conference, Burgess said, “The temperature increase since second half of the 19th century is estimated to be around 1.2°C. The rate of warming has not been steady. Between 2003 to 2012 there was hardly any change, it was the famous climate pause. But there was an exceptional rise after that. The warming trend is around 0.19°C per decade since 1979. But in 2023 rate of change was outside what was expected.”
She added that there needs to be more study on whether 2023 saw a tipping point, or it was just an anomalous year.
Close to 50% of days in 2023 were more than 1.5°C warmer than the 1850-1900 level, and two days in November were, for the first time ever, more than 2°C warmer.
Annual average air temperatures were the warmest on record, or close to the warmest, over sizeable parts of all ocean basins and all continents except Australia.
September 2023 was the month with a temperature deviation above the 1991-2020 average larger than any month in the ERA5 dataset while December 2023 was the warmest December on record globally, with an average temperature of 13.51°C.
Global average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) also remained unusually high, reaching record levels for the time of year from April through December. The unprecedented SSTs were associated with marine heatwaves around the globe, including in parts of the Mediterranean, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and North Pacific, and much of the North Atlantic, Copernicus said. The warming trend in oceans is expected to continue till mid-2024, experts said.
Last year was remarkable for Antarctic sea ice: it reached record low extents for the corresponding time of the year during eight months. The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane continued to increase and reached record levels in 2023, reaching 419ppm and 1,902ppb respectively.
There is an ongoing El Nino event that began last year which contributed to exceptional temperatures but that is only part of the story experts explained. Major contribution to record breaking temperatures was from very high global greenhouse gas concentrations.
“We had two days in November when it exceeded 2°C threshold over pre-industrial levels. El Nino is part of the story but major contribution to such warming is from concentration of greenhouse gas emissions. El Nino developed and build around the world but there is only a small contribution from current El Nino event. 2023 would have been an exceptional year even without El Nino. Record ocean temperatures were recorded since April so warming started well before El Nino developed,” Burgess said.
The weather extremes are evidence of how far humanity has reached from the climate in which it developed, said Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service in a statement. “This has profound consequences for the Paris Agreement and all human endeavours. If we want to successfully manage our climate risk portfolio, we need to urgently decarbonise our economy whilst using climate data and knowledge to prepare for the future.”
The earliest signs of how unusual 2023 was to become emerged in early June, when temperature anomalies relative to 1850-1900 pre-industrial level reached 1.5°C for several days in a row, Copernicus said.
For the rest of 2023, global daily temperature anomalies above 1.5°C became a regular occurrence, to the point where close to 50% of days in 2023 were in excess of 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 level.
“This does not mean that we have surpassed the limits set by the Paris Agreement (as they refer to periods of at least 20 years where this average temperature anomaly is exceeded) but sets a dire precedent,” Copernicus said in its statement.
“Throughout 2023, extreme weather events demonstrated how poorly prepared the world is for the growing risks of climate change,” said Friederike Otto, cofounder of World Weather Attribution and senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, in a statement.
In July 2023, heatwaves hit the US, southern Europe and China, with temperatures in the US and China exceeding 50°C. “Temperatures exceeding 50°C are also possible in Europe,” said Erich Fischer, professor at ETH Zurich, who studies very extreme heat waves within XAIDA, a consortium of leading European climate institutes.
Fischer and colleagues studied heatwaves over France in thousands of climate model realisations and found that heat waves much warmer than presently observed are possible with accelerating climate change. “Heat stress associated with such worst-case heat waves present risks for large public events in cities, like the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games in Paris which are organized at the height of the summer season” said Pascal Yiou, vice-coordinator of XAIDA and Senior Researcher at CNRS in Paris on Tuesday.
Only way forward is to reduce emissions and move to renewable energy sources, experts said.
“We are breaching 1.5°C on annual basis. The only solution to control this crisis is to reduce the emission of GHGs substantially and move more into green energy. Carbon capture technology also can be explored but we are not sure how effective that will be. Cutting down emissions is the best way. Developed countries who emit more should make far stronger commitments to reduce GHG emissions. But, unfortunately that commitment is not seen,” said M Rajeevan, former secretary, ministry of earth sciences.
Last year was the second-warmest on record for India since 1901, the IMD said last week and predicted the month of January will unlikely have very harsh winter conditions for most parts of the country. The annual mean land surface air temperature over India averaged 0.65 degree C above the long-term average for 1981 to 2010 period, slightly lower from the 0.71 degree C recorded in 2016.
Last year had the highest number of very heavy and extremely heavy (over 20 cm) rainfall events in five years, IMD said. A large number of extreme weather events were also reported last year. Thunderstorms and lightning reportedly claimed more than 1,270 lives; heavy rainfall events killed around 860 persons and heat waves killed 160 people based on IMD’s analysis of various news and other reports.
