2023 was the hottest year in the history of the planet, says European observatory

The year 2023 was confirmed as the hottest on record, according to a report released this Tuesday, 9, by the European Copernicus observatory. The average temperature last year was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than in the pre-industrial era, according to the agency.

This value is slightly lower than the 1.5°C that the world had proposed as a limit, under the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, in order to avoid the most serious effects of global warming. And January 2024 is on track to be so hot that, for the first time, a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5°C limit, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Scientists maintain that the planet would need an average warming of 1.5°C over two to three decades to technically breach the limit. “The 1.5°C warming target must be maintained because lives are at risk and there are decisions that will have to be made and these decisions will not affect you or me, but they will affect our people. Children and grandchildren,” said Samantha.

Record heat caused havoc and even deaths in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year. But scientists also warn that atmospheric warming is causing extreme weather phenomena, such as the prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa, the torrential rains that destroyed dams and killed thousands of people in Libya, and the forest fires in Canada that polluted the air in North America. North to Europe.

For the first time, countries gathered at the annual United Nations climate conference in December last year agreed to abandon the hydrocarbons responsible for climate change, but did not establish concrete requirements for doing so.

Copernicus estimates that the average global temperature in 2023 was about one-sixth of 1°C higher than the previous record set in 2016.

While this seems like a tiny figure in the context of global records, it is an exceptionally large margin for a record, said the Copernicus deputy director. The average global temperature in 2023 was 14.98°C, calculates Copernicus.

“Records were broken for seven months. We had a hotter June, July, August, September, October, November and December,” said Samantha.

“It wasn’t just one season or just one month that was exceptional. It was exceptional for more than half the year. There are several factors that contributed to 2023 being the hottest year on record, but by far the biggest was greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere,” she said. These gases come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.