NEW DELHI: Ahead of the landmark climate summit this month, scientists have warned that the world is set to be the hottest in 2023, more than any other year on record, reported The Guardian.
With temperatures 1.7C above what had been during the average October in the late 1800s, the scientists found last month was the hottest on record globally.
“We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average,” Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service told The Guardian.
“The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher,” he added.
There has been a sharp increase in the heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere which has raised the planet’s temperature by 1.2C since the Industrial Revolution. The burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature are two of the few practices that have left the planet sweltering.
According to The Guardian, the global temperature anomaly for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in its dataset, the scientists found, behind only the month before.
Scientists believe that the extreme temperatures are the result of a “powerful mix of greenhouse gas pollution, the return of the natural weather pattern El Nino, and a handful of other factors including a drop in sulphur pollution and a volcanic eruption in Tonga”.
“The fact that we’re seeing this record hot year means record human suffering,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London told the news outlet.
“Within this year, extreme heatwaves and droughts made much worse by these extreme temperatures have caused thousands of deaths, people losing their livelihoods, being displaced etc. These are the records that matter. That is why the Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty, and not keeping to the goals in it, is violating human rights on a vast scale,” he added.
The current condition is contradictory to world leaders’ promise made eight years ago at a summit in Paris, where they promised to stop the planet heating by 1.5C by the end of the century.
At a summit in Paris eight years ago, world leaders promised to try to stop the planet heating by 1.5C by the end of the century. But current policies are set to heat it by about 2.4C.
“The sizzling October 2023 is another unfortunate example that shows how temperature records are getting shattered by a humongous margin. Global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions and El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean are hitting the planet really hard,” Akshay Deoras, a meteorology research scientist at the University of Reading told the news outlet.
“It is frightening to see that the global temperature since June 2023 is much warmer than that during the second half of 2015, when El Nino was much stronger. Our planet continues to pass through unfortunate milestones in its meteorological history, and it won’t be surprising to see new records in subsequent months,” he further said.
With temperatures 1.7C above what had been during the average October in the late 1800s, the scientists found last month was the hottest on record globally.
“We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average,” Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service told The Guardian.
“The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher,” he added.
There has been a sharp increase in the heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere which has raised the planet’s temperature by 1.2C since the Industrial Revolution. The burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature are two of the few practices that have left the planet sweltering.
According to The Guardian, the global temperature anomaly for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in its dataset, the scientists found, behind only the month before.
Scientists believe that the extreme temperatures are the result of a “powerful mix of greenhouse gas pollution, the return of the natural weather pattern El Nino, and a handful of other factors including a drop in sulphur pollution and a volcanic eruption in Tonga”.
“The fact that we’re seeing this record hot year means record human suffering,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London told the news outlet.
“Within this year, extreme heatwaves and droughts made much worse by these extreme temperatures have caused thousands of deaths, people losing their livelihoods, being displaced etc. These are the records that matter. That is why the Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty, and not keeping to the goals in it, is violating human rights on a vast scale,” he added.
The current condition is contradictory to world leaders’ promise made eight years ago at a summit in Paris, where they promised to stop the planet heating by 1.5C by the end of the century.
At a summit in Paris eight years ago, world leaders promised to try to stop the planet heating by 1.5C by the end of the century. But current policies are set to heat it by about 2.4C.
“The sizzling October 2023 is another unfortunate example that shows how temperature records are getting shattered by a humongous margin. Global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions and El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean are hitting the planet really hard,” Akshay Deoras, a meteorology research scientist at the University of Reading told the news outlet.
“It is frightening to see that the global temperature since June 2023 is much warmer than that during the second half of 2015, when El Nino was much stronger. Our planet continues to pass through unfortunate milestones in its meteorological history, and it won’t be surprising to see new records in subsequent months,” he further said.
