This year will “almost certainly” be the hottest year in history, the World Meteorological Organization announced Thursday at COP28, the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, bringing together delegates from nearly 200 countries, including many governments. and heads of government came together.
The organization said 2023 was about 1.4 degrees Celsius, or about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, above the global average pre-industrial temperature from 1850 to 1990. The past nine years have been the warmest nine in 174 years of recorded scientific observations, with the previous single-year records set in 2020 and 2016. There are also records for greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level and methane concentrations.
“It’s a deafening cacophony of broken records,” Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in Dubai.
Although year-end data is still pending, the organization released an early draft of its State of the Global Climate report to inform talks in Dubai, where diplomats and leaders are trying to negotiate plans to accelerate the global transition away from the climate crisis fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the earth.
Mr Taalas said he hoped the report would signal to negotiators in Dubai the urgent need to negotiate an ambitious deal to curb climate change. “We’re not going in the right direction at all,” he later said in an interview. “We’re going in the wrong direction.”
The preliminary results matched scientists’ predictions: global average temperature records were broken month after month in 2023.
By highlighting the changes the planet is already undergoing, the scientific community wants to ensure that COP28 leaders understand the urgency of climate change and the importance of their decisions, said Brenda Ek Wurzel, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Ekroot was not involved in the World Meteorological Organization report, but contributed to a similar report in the United States.
“The decision-makers in international negotiations are at the helm of future climate change,” she said.
Summer in the Northern Hemisphere was disastrously hot for much of the world’s population, and July was the hottest month on Earth in recorded history. Scientists found that extreme temperatures in North America and Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change from burning fossil fuels.
The true cost in human life and economic loss will only become clear over time. But research in recent years reveals the high price of global warming in general. It is estimated that more than 61,000 people died from heatwaves in Europe alone in 2022. In Africa, climate change has led to more hunger, malaria, dengue fever and floods, Mr. Taalas said.
More intense and concentrated rain showers are an effect of climate change. In September, a powerful storm dumped torrential rain across the Mediterranean, causing two dams to rupture in Libya and killing thousands in the city of Derna. Earlier this year, exceptionally long-lived Tropical Cyclone Freddy struck southern Africa, formed in early February and made final landfall in Mozambique and Malawi in mid-March. The storm left more than 600 people dead and more than 600,000 displaced in Malawi.
Another powerful storm, Tropical Cyclone Mocha, hit Southeast Asia in May. The cyclone displaced more than a million people, including many Rohingya refugees who had already been displaced from Myanmar once and were living in the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh.
In less dire circumstances, high temperatures prevent people from working as many hours as they normally would. According to a study, the United States agriculture, construction, manufacturing and service sectors lost more than 2.5 billion work hours due to heat exposure in 2021. A separate assessment found that productivity losses due to extreme heat cost the American economy about $100 billion in 2020.
These figures do not take into account what is lost due to other climate-related disasters. This year’s record-breaking heat contributed to a spate of wildfires around the world, particularly in Canada, where more than 45 million hectares burned and hundreds of thousands evacuated their homes in what was by far the country’s worst wildfire year. Smoke from the long-running fires affected millions more people in distant cities.
Nature has also paid its price, especially in the ocean, which has so far absorbed 90 percent of global warming. Sea surface temperatures reached new highs this year, particularly in the Atlantic. In July, a buoy off the coast of Florida recorded a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Coral reefs in the region suffered mass bleaching.
“Record warming should send shivers down the spines of world leaders,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message to the conference in Dubai on Thursday. “Today’s report shows we are in big trouble. Leaders must get us out of this, starting with COP28.”