Global temperatures in 2023 were 1.48°C warmer than pre-industrial levels of 1850-1900 (Infographic Marcelo Regalado)
He 2023The country hit World records for annual heat and approached the 1.5°C warming threshold that countries set as a limit when signing the Paris Agreement.
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Last year it surpassed all previous records and achieved one global average temperature of 14.98 degrees and was the first to record each day more than one degree warmer than in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900.
As reported by the The European Commission's Copernicus program recorded 0.17 degrees higher in 2023 than the 2016 temperaturethe warmest in the last year.
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but the year 2024 it could be worse.
“He Climate change It is the greatest global threat of our time, and rising inequality is exacerbating its impact. We just experienced the hottest year ever and 2024 could be even hotter and more extreme Once the full effect of He child The ongoing crisis is manifested in temperatures and meteorological phenomena,” he explained. Celeste Saulothe scientist of Conicet of Argentina, who took office as Secretary General on January 4th World Meteorological Organizationwith headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
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He child It developed rapidly in July and August. It reached moderate intensity in September 2023. It is a phenomenon that occurs on average every two to seven years and usually lasts between nine and twelve months.
El Niño refers to rising water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. It combines with other changes in the atmosphere and leads to more rain or more droughts in different places on Earth (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)
Several centuries agospoke the fishermen of Peru and Ecuador The young to refer to the unusually warm water that had recently caused a decline in their catches Christmas. Thanks to scientific research, it was later explained that it was a natural and recurring phenomenon, which today is “El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)“.
It is characterized by the fluctuation of sea temperatures in the sea Peaceful Equatorial, associated with changes in the atmosphere. These changes have a significant impact on weather conditions in different parts of the world. The WMO I already warned you about that The current El Niño episode is expected to last at least until April 2024
The program Copernicus was the first of several teams from scientific agencies to calculate the temperature of 2023 to be 1.48 degrees higher than the pre-industrial era. This value is just below the 1.5 degree limit that the world agreed to meet in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to avoid the most serious impacts of warming.
Now, In January 2024 it is likely to be so warm that the 1.5 degree threshold will be exceeded for the first time in a twelve-month periodsaid the deputy director of Copernicus, Samantha Burgess.
According to the new Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Saulo, the year 2024 could be even hotter and more extreme as global warming caused by human activities is added to the effects of the natural phenomenon El Niño (WMO). .
Scientists have repeatedly pointed out that the Earth would need an average warming of 1.5 degrees over a period of two to three decades for the threshold to be technically exceeded.
The 1.5 degree target “must stay alive because lives are at risk and decisions have to be made.” And those decisions don’t affect you and me, but our children and our grandchildren,” Burgess said, as reported by the AP reported.
The effects of El Niño added to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activities.
Gavin SmithDirector of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies on POT, wrote in a blog that El Niño played a larger role in global temperatures in the year after it began. That means it will be in 2024. Instead, the heat in 2023 occurred far from El Niño's influence over the North Atlantic and Pacific.
In 2023, according to the European Commission's Copernicus program/archive, there were record-breaking temperatures in the months of June, July, August, September, October, November and December
In 2023, “records were broken for seven months. We had the warmest months of June, July, August, September, October, November and December,” Burgess said. “It wasn’t just an extraordinary season or month. “It was extraordinary for more than half the year.”
It is also the first year that it will be more than one degree warmer each day than in pre-industrial times,” Burgess explained.
According to the Copernicus program The year 2023 was so warm due to the combination of continued global warming and the occurrence of El Niño.
But there are also “additional unforeseen factors, some of which are still being scientifically investigated,” he reported. These factors contributed to the extreme temperatures in 2023.
In 2023, heat waves hit Europe, North America, China and many other places in July last year. Parts of Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Argentina experienced an extraordinary winter heatwave that broke temperature records.
In 2023, there were longer summer heat waves in the northern hemisphere. Heat waves were recorded in South America in winter, a very rare phenomenon (Portal/Remo Casilli)
For example, the city of Buenos Aires experienced its hottest early August since 1905, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees Celsius, compared to the usual 15 degrees for this time of year.
Beyond heat waves, global warming has also been linked to other more extreme weather events, such as the ongoing drought that devastated the Horn of Africa, the torrential rains that destroyed dams in Libya and killed thousands of people, and wildfires from Canada that contaminated the air of North America to Europe.
In December, the countries meet for the annual United Nations climate negotiations, in the so-called COP28, agreed that the world must abandon fossil fuels that cause climate change. However, they did not set any specific requirements.