Last year was the hottest year since records began in 1850, a shocking fact that has been confirmed by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Samantha Burgess, the agency's deputy director, even said last year's temperatures"Probably more than any period in at least the last 100,000 years"。This means that we are experiencing an unprecedented climate anomaly, and the situation is getting worse.
The average global temperature in 2023 was 148 degrees Celsius, far surpassing the previous hottest year of 2016. This figure is already close to the 1 set by the Paris Agreement5 degrees Celsius, beyond which the world faces more climate catastrophes such as extreme weather, rising sea levels, biodiversity loss, and human health hazards.
Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, warned in a press release: "The extreme weather phenomena we have observed over the past few months are strong evidence of how far we are from the climatic environment in which our civilization is developing. This has far-reaching implications for the Paris Agreement and for all human efforts. ”
Last year, places like Europe, North America and China all suffered deadly heatwaves that killed thousands of people and caused huge economic losses. According to a report called"World Weather Attribution"According to an analysis by the International Cooperation of World Weather Attribution, the occurrence of these heat waves is directly related to human-caused warming, and "without human-caused warming, such heat waves are extremely rare or even impossible". This is just one example of the many ways climate change is exacerbating global disasters, with many more droughts, floods, storms, forest fires, melting glaciers, and more.
To give you a more visual idea of last year's temperatures, I've shown a graph of how global temperatures have changed since 1850. You can see that the last five years have been the hottest on record, and the trend is rising. This shows that we are facing an urgent climate crisis that requires immediate action.
According to Copernicus's latest**, temperatures for the 12-month period ending January or February 2024"Probably"15 degrees Celsius. This means that we may soon reach the tipping point of the Paris Agreement, at which point the effects of climate change will become irreversible. The UK Met Office also**, 2024 will be hotter than last year.
Even so, hopes for a halt to climate change have not been dashed. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to avoid a sustained increase in average temperatures above 15 degrees. The El Niño weather pattern that emerged in 2023 combined with greenhouse gas emissions to make last year's temperatures particularly high, but El Niño is expected to end later this year. This will give us some buffer time to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, increase our use of clean energy, and reduce our heating pollution to the planet. Whether or not the world meets global climate goals, every degree is different for our future prospects. The global average temperature in 2023 is the highest on record