Text | robert hart
Scientists confirmed Tuesday that 2023 was the hottest year on record globally. Experts warn that 2024 could be even hotter as climate change raises temperatures to a critical threshold that could cause lasting damage to the environment and human health.
Key facts
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that the average global temperature in 2023 is 1498 degrees Celsius.
According to the center, this figure is measured at 0The "big increase" of 17 degrees Celsius broke the 14 recorded in 2016A record of 81 degrees Celsius.
According to the center, "unprecedented" global temperatures starting in June 2023 led to the setting of new records, which were the same for every month of last year until December"Higher than the corresponding month of any previous year"。
Last year's July and August were also the hottest months on record, with the Northern Hemisphere summer (which lasted from June to August) being the hottest season on record, and last December being the hottest December on record globally, according to the Copernicus Service Centre.
Overall, the average temperature in 2023 is 148 degrees Celsius, close to the proposed warming of 1 in the Paris climate agreementA critical value of 5 degrees Celsius.
This threshold is likely to be exceeded during the 12-month period ending in January or February 2024, the center said.
Important remarks
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said last year was "an unusual year, with climate records collapsing like dominoes". Not only was 2023 the hottest on record, but it was "the first year in which all days in the year were more than 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial period," Burgess said, adding that last year's temperatures could have exceeded "any period in at least the last 100,000 years." Carlo Buontempo, climate director at the Copernicus Centre, said the "extreme" climate of 2023 "dramatically demonstrates how far we are from the climatic environment in which civilization develops" and illustrates the need for "urgent decarbonisation of the economy".
Key Context
The Copernicus Center's data confirms a result that few experts doubt, with many people being very sure of the record climate state of the year before the end of 2023. Last year's high temperatures broke all-time records, with areas of the U.S., including New Orleans, Houston, Miami and Portland, as well as regions from China to Rome, setting record highs. While it is true that the climate varies naturally due to natural phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña patterns, scientists are convinced that human activities, mainly the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, have exceeded these limits. The Earth is an extremely complex system, and experts warn that human actions have pushed the world to the "edge" of an environmental tipping point, and that it may not recover. A warming climate will lead to an increase in climate-related disasters such as storms, wildfires, droughts and floods, as well as ill health and deaths directly caused by extreme heat, which will increase in severity and frequency as the world continues to warm. Experts agree that we need to make rapid and drastic cuts in carbon emissions to mitigate the damage caused by climate change and keep it at dangerous but hopefully manageable levels. The phase-out of fossil fuels and the transition to cleaner energy sources is the main way we will achieve this goal, and this transition is the ultimate goal of a global agreement on countries to commit to limiting climate change. However, due to differences in historical emissions, economic dependence on fossil fuels, the different expected impacts of climate change, and lack of access to green technologies, there are widely divergent views on equitable and achievable goals, and consensus and action have proven to be difficult.
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