The period came close to exceeding the limit of the Paris Agreement
The European Union’s Earth observation program confirmed that 2023 was humanity’s warmest year on record, with an increase of 1.48ºC compared to the pre-industrial period, between 1850 and 1900.
The information was released this Tuesday (9) by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), an initiative jointly led by the EU and the European Space Agency (ESA) to monitor the progress of global warming on the planet.
The Earth’s temperature increase in 2023 compared to the pre-industrial era will be close to exceeding 1.5°C, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement for the end of this century.
According to C3S, this limit can be exceeded within the 12-month period ending in January or February 2024.
Nearly half of the days in 2023, however, have already shown 1.5ºC warmer than between 1850 and 1900, while two days in November topped the 2ºC mark for the first time.
“This does not mean that we have exceeded the limits set in the Paris Agreement, which refer to a period of at least 20 years with this anomaly, but it sets a terrible precedent,” C3S explained.
If this trend continues, humanity will have to live in the coming decades with a constant rise in sea levels, threatening coastal areas (which are home to the majority of the planet’s population), with more frequent heat waves and a growing number of extreme phenomena . like hurricanes and droughts.
The year 2023 also recorded an average land surface temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17 higher than the previous record, set in 2016. From June to December, each month broke a heat record for the period .
Furthermore, July and August were the two hottest months in human history. Ocean surface temperatures also “remained persistently and unusually high, reaching records for the period between April and December,” Copernicus says.
From mid-2023 onwards, the world began to experience El Niño, a periodic phenomenon characterized by the warming of the Pacific Ocean, with increased precipitation in some parts and drought in others.
The concentration of carbon dioxide and methane (greenhouse gases) also broke a record in 2023, with 419 parts per million and 1,902 parts per billion, respectively.
Source: Terra
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