Scientists at the European Union’s Copernicus Observatory predicted on Wednesday that the current year 2023 will be the hottest in 125,000 years, after data showed that last October was the hottest in the world during those years. Climate change increases the intensity of destructive extreme weather events. This year, these phenomena included floods that killed thousands of people in Libya, extreme heat waves in South America, and the worst wildfire season Canada has ever seen.
Published on: 08/11/2023 – 09:01
3 minutes
It is almost certain that this year will be the highest in temperatures the heat 125 thousand years ago, this is what European Union scientists announced on Wednesday after data showed that last month, October, was the hottest in the world during those years.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Observatory said that last month broke the previous temperature record recorded during October since 2019 by a large margin.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the observatory, described the temperature imbalance in October as “very severe,” and said, “The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge difference.”
Global warming and the El Niño phenomenon are the most important reasons
The rise in temperatures is caused by continued emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity, in addition to the formation of the “El Niño” phenomenon this year, which leads to a rise in the surface temperature of waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Globally, the average air temperature at the Earth’s surface in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than in the same month during the period from 1850 to 1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period.
The observatory said in a statement that breaking the record in October means that it is “almost certain” that 2023 will become the hottest year on record. The previous record was set in 2016, which witnessed another El Niño phenomenon.
Copernicus began recording data in 1940. “When we compare our data to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we can say that this is the warmest year in the past 125,000 years,” Burgess said.
Long-term data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral reefs.
Natural disasers
The only time temperatures exceeded the average by such a large margin before October was in the previous month, September.
Climate change increases the intensity of destructive extreme weather events. This year, these phenomena included floods that killed thousands of people in Libya, extreme heat waves in South America, and the worst wildfire season Canada has ever seen.
“We must not allow the devastating floods, bushfires, storms and heatwaves we have seen this year to be the new normal,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds.
He added: “By rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, we can halve the rate of temperature rise.”
Although countries are setting increasingly ambitious targets to gradually reduce emissions, this has not happened so far. Global carbon dioxide emissions reached a record level in 2022.
France 24/Reuters
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2023-11-08 08:01:26
