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Before the year has even come to a close, climate experts are certain that 2023 will be the hottest year in recorded history. And while several factors are impacting this year’s record heat, researchers say human-caused climate change is overwhelmingly responsible.
On Dec. 6, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) — part of the European Union’s space program — revealed that this year’s boreal autumn, or September to November in the Northern Hemisphere, has been the warmest since their records began in 1940, with temperatures reaching 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.32 degrees Celsius) higher than ever before.
This year, we have already had the warmest summer on record, partly due to a record-shattering heatwave that included a sequence of three of the hottest-ever days globally. During 2023, six individual months also broke their global temperature records, according to C3S, and Antarctica’s sea ice reached its lowest levels since records began.
So far this year, average global temperatures have been 2.6 F (1.46 C) higher than temperatures in preindustrial times and 0.2 F (0.13 C) higher than January to November in 2016, which is the current hottest year on record, according to C3S.
These “extraordinary” temperatures mean that 2023 will be “the warmest year in recorded history,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said in a statement.
The researchers note that the unusually warm boreal autumn was partly caused by the latest El Niño event — a phenomenon where warmer water near the equator triggers warmer global air temperatures — that officially began in June. El Niño will continue into next year, which means that 2024 will likely be just as warm as 2023.
For the last three years, global temperatures were kept in check by a triple-dip La Niña event, which has the opposite effects to El Niño. But without La Niña, sea surface temperatures have climbed higher than ever before.
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
