New Delhi: Last year was the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850, Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Tuesday.
In 2023, the global average temperature was 14.98 degree C, 0.17 degree C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016. Last year was 0.60 degree C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48 degree C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. It is likely that a 12-month period ending in January or February, 2024 will exceed 1.5 degree C above the pre-industrial level.
Copernicus, which is the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme, said: 2023 marks the first time on record that every day within a year has exceeded 1 degree C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. Close to 50% of days were more than 1.5 degree C warmer than the 1850-1900 level, and two days in November were, for the first time, more than 2 degree C warmer.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said: “2023 was an exceptional year with climate records tumbling like dominoes. Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, it is also the first year with all days over 1°C warmer than the pre-industrial period. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”
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Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service added: “The extremes we have observed over the last few months provide a dramatic testimony of how far we now are from the climate in which our civilisation developed. 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.”
These record temperatures strongly increased the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall associated with storms like Otis and Daniel, said XAIDA, a consortium of leading European climate institutes.
In July 2023, heatwaves hit the United States, southern Europe and China, with temperatures in the US and China exceeding 50 degree C. Such heatwaves can be deadly.
“Temperatures exceeding 50°C are also possible in Europe”, said Erich Fischer, Professor at ETH Zurich who studies very extreme heat waves within XAIDA. 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 “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.
