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Washington: Amid rising concerns of climate change, especially caused by fossil fuel emissions, researchers have found the past 12 months (November 2022 to October 2023) have been the hottest ever recorded, and the situation is expected to worsen next year.
That’s the message from UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which said on Wednesday that for the calendar year to date, the global mean temperature is the highest ever recorded, 1.43 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and sea ice in the Antarctic remains at record low levels.
WMO expects the warming El Niño climate pattern to last at least until April 2024, contributing to a further spike in temperatures.
Head of WMO, Petteri Taalas, said that as El Niño’s impacts on global temperature typically play out in the year after its development, next year “may be even warmer”.
While El Niño occurs naturally, it takes place in the context of climate change fuelled by “increasing concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from human activities,” Prof. Taalas stressed.
He warned that extreme weather events such as heatwaves, drought, wildfires, heavy rain and floods will be worse in some regions.
“That is why WMO is committed to the Early Warnings For All initiative to save lives and minimize economic losses,” he added.
The previous warmest year on record was 2016 due to a “double whammy” of an exceptionally strong El Niño and climate change.
El Niño is created by warm waters coming to the surface which are then released as extra heat into the atmosphere.
Since May this year, monthly average sea surface temperature anomalies in the central-eastern equatorial Pacific have warmed significantly, rising from about 0.5 °C above average to around 1.5 °C above average in September, WMO said.
These estimates are relative to the 1991-2020 baseline period, using the latest version of the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) dataset.
The most recent expert forecasts suggest a high likelihood of continued warming in the Pacific for at least the next four overlapping three-month seasons, through to February-April 2024.
A strong El Niño does not necessarily mean strong El Niño impacts locally, the UN agency stresses.
“It is important to note that El Niño is not the only factor that drives global and regional climate patterns, and that the magnitudes of El Niño indicators do not directly correspond to the magnitudes of their effects. No two El Niño events are alike.”
As per Climate Central, in the examined period, at least 90 per cent of the world’s population experienced at least 10 days with high temperatures that would have been unlikely without the influence of climate change, while 25 per cent faced five-day heat wave spells made at least twice as likely by climate change.
“This is the hottest temperature our planet has experienced in something like 125,000 years,” Climate Central’s Vice President (Science), Andrew Pershing, said at a news conference, NBC News reported.
The researchers say climate change from the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of the increase in temperature, while El Nino, a natural climate pattern that releases ocean heat into the atmosphere, is also beginning to boost temperatures.
Pershing and many other scientists have warned that the next year could set new records as the influence of El Nino makes a stronger impact.
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