But the record-shattering temperatures of 2023 have nonetheless alarmed scientists, and hint at some "mysterious" new processes that may be under way, NASA's top climatologist Gavin Schmidt tells AFP.
The following are excerpts from an interview with Schmidt:
- Can you put what we saw in 2023 into perspective? -
It wasn't just a record. It was a record that broke the previous record by a record margin.
We started with La Nina, this cool phenomenon in the tropical Pacific. That was still around until March. And then in May, we started to see the development of an El Nino, the warm phase of that cycle.
It normally affects the temperatures in the following year. So that would be 2024. But what we saw in 2023 was that the temperatures globally seemed to go up with the El Nino event, in a much greater way than we'd ever seen it before.
The long term trends we understand, and it's being driven by the greenhouse gases, it's being driven by anthropogenic effects. We're expecting that to continue, decade by decade, until we stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which we haven't done yet.
But what happened in 2023 was that, and then plus something. And that 'plus something' is much larger than we expect, or as yet can explain.
- What are the leading hypotheses for that 'plus something'? -
There have been emails and conversations going on around the world, among the scientists who are looking at this, and people say, 'Oh, let's look at the Earth's energy imbalances. Let's look at the aerosols, let's look at the El Nino, at what's happening in the Antarctic, in the North Atlantic.' And everybody has lots of ideas, but it doesn't quite add up.
It may be that El Nino is enough. But if I look at all of the other El Ninos that we've had, none of them did this. So either this El Nino is really super special, or the atmosphere is responding to this El Nino in a very special way. Or there's something else going on. And nobody has yet really narrowed these possibilities.
That long-term trend is still within the bounds of what we've been predicting for many years. But the specifics of what happened in 2023 are a little mysterious.
- What should we expect for 2024? -
It matters why 2023 was the way it was, because does that mean it's going to continue? Does that mean the impacts are going to start to accelerate? We don't know! And that's problematic.
2023 did not follow the old patterns. If the old patterns come back, and 2023 was just a blip, then 2024 will be very close to 2023. If it's not a blip, if it's something systematic that's changed, or that's changing, then you would expect 2024 to actually be warmer. Because you have the warmth that you would expect, and then there's this extra thing.
And that has implications for the weather, and heat waves, and intense rainfall, and coastal flooding, and all the rest of it, that we can expect this year.
El Nino could make 2024 hotter than record 2023
Geneva (AFP) Jan 12, 2024 -
This year could be hotter under El Nino's influence than the record-shattering 2023, the United Nations warned Friday, as it urged drastic emissions cuts to combat climate change.
The UN's World Meteorological Organization said new monthly temperature records were set every month between June and December, and the pattern is likely to continue due to the warming El Nino weather phenomenon.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted there is a one in three chance that 2024 will be warmer than 2023 -- and a 99 percent certainty that 2024 will rank among the five warmest years ever.
NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, estimated the odds were even higher.
"I put it at about 50-50: 50 percent chance it'll be warmer, 50 percent chance it will be slightly cooler," he told AFP, adding there were hints of "mysterious" changes to Earth's climate systems, that would nonetheless require more data to confirm or refute.
The UN's WMO weather and climate agency said July and August last year were the two hottest months ever recorded, as it officially confirmed 2023 had been the warmest year on record "by a huge margin".
The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- and 1.5C if possible.
The WMO said the 2023 annual average global temperature was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) -- though one of the six datasets it relies on, the non-profit research organization Berkeley Earth, placed the figure as high as 1.54C.
The WMO's new secretary-general Celeste Saulo warned that El Nino, which emerged mid-2023, is likely to turn up the heat even further in 2024.
The naturally-occurring climate pattern, typically associated with increased heat worldwide, usually increases global temperatures in the year after it develops.
"The shift from cooling La Nina to warming El Nino by the middle of 2023 is clearly reflected in the rise in temperature," she said.
"Given that El Nino usually has the biggest impact on global temperatures after it peaks, 2024 could be even hotter."
- Humanity's 'biggest challenge' -
NOAA said the 2023 global surface temperature was 1.18C above the 20th-century average, and was hotter than the next warmest year, 2016, by a record-setting margin of 0.15C.
The Arctic, northern North America, central Asia, the North Atlantic and the eastern tropical Pacific were particularly hotter, it said.
Saulo said climate change was now "the biggest challenge that humanity faces".
A WMO report in November found that concentrations of the three main heat-trapping greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- reached record high levels in 2022, with preliminary data indicating that the levels continued to grow in 2023.
"Climate change is escalating -- and this is unequivocally because of human activities," said Saulo.
- 'Catastrophic future' awaits -
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said humanity's actions were "scorching the Earth".
"2023 was a mere preview of the catastrophic future that awaits if we don't act now," he said.
The WMO said that since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one -- while the warmest nine years on record had all been since 2015.
The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service issued its 2023 temperature findings on Tuesday, while NOAA and NASA released theirs simultaneously with the WMO on Friday.
The WMO consolidates figures from six major international datasets to provide an authoritative temperature assessment.
It said the 10-year average temperature from 2014 to 2023 was 1.20C above the pre-industrial average.
Even if Earth's average surface temperature breaches the 1.5C mark in 2024, it does not mean the world has failed to meet the Paris Agreement target of capping global warming under that threshold.
That would occur only after several successive years above the 1.5C benchmark, and even then the 2015 treaty allows for the possibility of reducing Earth's temperature after a period of "overshoot".
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