‘Virtually Certain’ 2023 Will Be Hottest Year on Record
Climate scientists warn world temperature targets are unreachable, as the planet experienced the hottest October recorded in history.
A preliminary analysis on climate change found that October was 0.3C warmer globally than the one the year before. A scientist confirming this assessment would solidify expectations that 2023 will be the hottest year on record.
Karsten Haustein, climate assessor at Leipzig University, examined data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction to create the report.
Haustein commented, “October was the warmest by a wide margin. It’s not as outrageous as September in terms of exceeding the previous warmest month, but certainly substantial.”
Debate Over Temperature Targets
As temperatures soared for October, a leading scientist called the 1.5C global target “deader than a doornail.”
Other scientific organizations are likely to confirm the results later this month. If so, they will probably use datasets from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US science agency, the EU Earth observation programme, Copernicus, and Berkley Earth.
Copernicus’ data, reported by The Times, communicates that this year’s first 28 days of October saw a 0.47 increase in average temperature, compared to the previous hottest on record, in 2019. The findings show that during this time window this year, 15.37C was the average temperature, compared to 14.9C, the second highest four years ago.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, told BBC News, “We really see no sign that this year’s string of exceptional record-setting months is going away anytime soon.”
He added, “And at this point, it makes it virtually certain in all the datasets that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. That’s a greater than 99% chance.”
Dr James Hansen at Columbia University Earth Institute, the scientist known by many as the expert bringing global warming into worldwide consciousness in 1988, said warming targets are “dead.”
He said,
“The 2C global warming limit is dead. The 1.5C is deader than a doornail.”
“We will need to cool off Earth to save our coastlines,” the researcher added.
However, an independent scientist, Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania, dismissed Hansen’s findings, calling them at least “unconvincing.”
Despite praising Hansen as “one of the most important contributors to our modern scientific understanding of human-caused climate change,” Mann said his study was “at best unconvincing.”
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