Earth Shattered Global Heat Record in 2023
Earth last year shattered global annual heat records and got dangerously close to the world's agreed-upon warming threshold, the European climate agency Copernicus, said on January 9.
Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. That's 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.
Scientists have said that Earth would need to average 1.5 degrees of warming over two or three decades for there to be a technical breach of the threshold.
The 1.5 degree goal "has to be [kept] alive because lives are at risk and choices have to be made," Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said.
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 a drought in the Horn of Africa, floods that killed thousands in Libya and the Canada wildfires that polluted the air from North America to Europe.
The United States experienced 28 weather disasters last year that caused at least $1 billion in damage, smashing the old record of 22 set in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The number of these disasters has increased from three per year in the 1980s and just under six per year in the 1990s.
Antarctic sea ice hit record low levels in 2023 and broke eight monthly records for low sea ice, Copernicus reported.
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.
Malte Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist, said it's natural for the public to wonder whether the 1.5-degree target is lost, but it's important to keep trying to rein in warming.
"We are not abolishing a speed limit, because somebody exceeded the speed limit," he said. "We double our efforts to step on the brakes."
