And with only one month left on the calendar, 2023 will break the record for the hottest year in history.
November was almost a third of a degree Celsius warmer than the warmest November on record, the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. According to scientists, November reached a temperature that was 1.75 degrees Celsius (3.15 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial era, joining October and September as the highest temperatures above average for any month.
“The last six months have been truly shocking,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. “Scientists are running out of adjectives to describe this.”
November averaged 14.22 degrees Celsius (57.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 30-year average. On two days this month the temperature was 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in the pre-industrial era, something Burgess said had never happened before.
According to calculations by Copernicus scientists, the temperature so far in 2023 is 1.46 degrees Celsius (2.6 Fahrenheit) warmer than in pre-industrial times and about a seventh of a degree warmer than 2016, the warmest year on record. The number is very close to the international threshold that the world has set for climate change.
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement set the long-term goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°Celsius (2.7°Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, and stipulated that it would have to be no more than 2°C if that goal would not be reached C (3.6 °F). Diplomats, scientists and activists, among others, are meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai to find a way to limit warming to this level, but the planet is not doing its part.
Scientists estimate that, based on the promises made by the world’s various countries and the policies they are implementing, the planet is poised for warming of 2.7 to 2.9 °C (4.9 to 5.2 °Fahrenheit) above the level of heading towards the pre-industrial era.
According to Copernicus, the northern autumn was also the warmest since records began.
Copernicus records date back to 1940. The U.S. government’s calculated records date back to 1850. Scientists, relying on references such as ice cores, tree rings and corals, say this is the warmest decade ever observed on Earth in about 125,000 years, before the start of human civilization. And the last few months have seen the highest temperatures in the last decade.
Scientists say there are two factors behind the six consecutive months of record heat. One of them is climate change caused by human activities through the consumption of coal, oil and gas. It’s like an escalator. But the natural El Niño-La Niña cycle is like jumping on the escalator.
The world is experiencing a strong El Niño cycle, which is a temporary warming of parts of the central Pacific that is changing the climate around the world and leading to increased global temperatures caused by climate change.
Temperatures will only rise as long as the world continues to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Burgess said. And that means: “Catastrophic floods, fires, heat waves and droughts will continue.”
“It is very likely that 2023 will be a mild year in the future if we do not do something about our dependence on fossil fuels,” he explained.
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Seth Borenstein is on X, formerly Twitter, as @borenbears
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SPRING: Associated Press