It was suspected, now it’s certain: 2023 was the hottest year since weather records began. And there is no improvement in sight: the 1.5 degree mark could be broken in 2024.
According to the EU climate change service Copernicus, 2023 was the hottest year on record. The global average temperature was 14.98 degrees, the climate service said on Tuesday. This was 0.17 degrees more than in the previous record year of 2016.
But last year was probably a record not only since official records began, but probably for a much longer period of time: “The temperatures in 2023 were most likely higher than any period in at least the past 100,000 years,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess.
Temperatures scratched the 1.5 degree threshold
With a view to climate change, Copernicus calculated that the global average temperature last year was 1.48 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial era. “It is also the first year in which every single day was at least one degree warmer than the pre-industrial period,” Burgess said.
In order to avert the catastrophic consequences of climate change, the international community agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 to limit global warming to well below two degrees, but if possible to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. Temperatures remained just below this 1.5 degree mark last year, but according to experts, the threshold is in danger of being exceeded next year.
Source: Stern
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