The year 2023 has etched its name in the record books as the hottest on record, with projections suggesting it may be the warmest in the past 100,000 years, reveals a report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
Regions like Europe, North America, and China witnessed unprecedented heat waves, attributing the rise in temperatures to a culmination of factors, primarily the escalating levels of greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gas emissions played a predominant role in propelling 2023 to the top spot, pushing the global average temperature to 14.98 degrees Celsius.
This marked a 0.17 degrees Celsius increase from the previous highest annual average in 2016, and notably, the planet was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average.
This temperature surge in 2023 came perilously close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service’s global climate highlights reveal that every month from June to December in 2023 surpassed corresponding months in any previous year on record.
The standout statistic was the temperature deviation of 0.93 degrees Celsius recorded in September 2023, the largest in any month across the years 1991-2020.
October, November, and December 2023 followed suit with a temperature deviation of 0.85 degrees Celsius above average, ranking second-largest.
Breaking more records, 2023 saw a temperature deviation of at least 1 degree Celsius over the pre-industrial average for every single day, surpassing the previous record of 363 days in 2019.
Two days in 2023 even breached the 2 degrees Celsius mark for the first time in history.
Nearly half of the year, or 173 days, experienced temperatures over 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average, a stark contrast to the 77 days recorded in the previous warmest year, 2016.
Moreover, sea surface temperatures in 2023 reached unprecedented levels.
Each month from April to December witnessed global sea surface temperatures breaking records for their respective times of the year.
August 23 and 24 set a new high of 21.02 degrees Celsius, surpassing the previous record set in March 2016.
January 11, 2024, went on to break this record with a global average sea surface temperature of 21.06 degrees Celsius, registering a record anomaly of 0.77 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.
In tandem, the year saw historically low extents of Antarctic sea ice for eight consecutive months, reaching their nadir in February 2023.
December 2023 recorded the second-lowest extent for any December in the 45-year data available, at 9.3 million sq km, deviating 15 percent below the December average for the period 1991-2020.
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