The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) officially verifies 2023 as the warmest year on record, with global temperatures soaring to unprecedented levels.
WMO’s report highlights that each month from June to December established new records, culminating in July and August becoming the hottest months ever documented.
Six prominent international datasets, compiled by WMO, reveal that the annual average global temperature in 2023 surpassed pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) by 1.45 ± 0.12 degrees Celsius.
Moreover, the Copernicus climate change service report indicates that all days in 2023 exceeded the pre-industrial level by over 1 degree Celsius, leading to a 30% surge in global wildfire carbon emissions compared to 2022.
Professor Celeste Saulo, WMO’s Secretary-General, emphasizes the urgency of addressing climate change, labeling it humanity’s paramount challenge.
Saulo urges swift and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions while accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources.
The shift from the cooling La Niña to the warming El Niño in mid-2023 contributed to the temperature rise, with Professor Saulo cautioning that 2024 could potentially be even hotter.
She underscores that although El Niño events are natural occurrences, the escalating longer-term climate change is unequivocally linked to human activities.
Antonio Guterres, UN’s Secretary-General, expresses concern, stating that human actions are causing irreversible damage to the planet.
Guterres emphasizes the need for immediate, ambitious efforts to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and ensure climate justice to avert a catastrophic future.
“We can still avoid the worst of climate catastrophe, but only if we react now with the ambition required to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and deliver climate justice,” he noted.
The report reveals a concerning trend since the 1980s, where each decade has been warmer than the preceding one, and the past nine years have marked the warmest on record.
These long-term climate changes are manifesting in day-to-day weather patterns, amplifying the urgency for decisive global action.
Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement seeks to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that climate-related risks for natural and human systems are higher for global warming of 1.5 °C than at present, but lower than at 2 °C.
A study by WMO and the UK’s Met Office last year predicted that there is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.
This does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years.
The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of exceedance