Recent calculations from various scientific organizations showing that Earth destroyed global heat records last year may seem frightening. But scientists worry that what lies behind these numbers could be even worse.
The Associated Press asked more than three dozen scientists in interviews and emails what the shredded records meant. Most said they fear an acceleration of climate change, which is just on the edge of a 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) increase since the pre-industrial period in which nations hope to remain.
“The temperature last calendar year was a striking message from Mother Nature,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Katharine Jacobs. Warming air and water are making deadly and costly heat waves, floods, droughts, storms and wildfires more intense and more likely, scientists say.
Last year was a complete disaster.
Average global temperatures broke the previous record by just over a quarter of a degree (0.15 degrees Celsius), according to calculations on Friday by a private group founded by two of America’s leading science institutions, the British meteorological service and the Climate Sciences Institute; big difference. skeptical.
Many of the scientists who made the calculations said the climate would behave in strange ways in 2023. They wonder whether human-caused climate change and the natural El Niño were amplified by a strange outburst, or whether “something more systematic is happening,” as NASA’s climate scientist puts it. Scientist Gavin Schmidt has laid this out, including the much-discussed acceleration of warming.
A partial answer may not come until late spring or early summer. That’s when the powerful El Niño (cyclical warming of Pacific Ocean waters that affects global weather) is expected to disappear. They say it would be an ominous clue if ocean temperatures, including deep water, continue to break records into summer months like 2023.
Nearly every scientist who responded to AP questions blamed greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels as the biggest reason the world is reaching temperatures never seen before by human civilization. They said El Niño, bordering on “very strong,” was the second biggest factor, with other conditions far behind.
The problem with 2023, NASA’s Schmidt said, is that “it was a very strange year… The deeper you dig, the less clear it looks.”
Part of this is due to the big heat explosion in 2023, according to Schmidt and Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Copernicus Climate Service, which earlier this week put warming at more than 1.48 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial period. timing when it started.
It was stated that temperatures generally reach their highest levels above normal in late winter and spring. However, the highest temperature of 2023 started around June and remained at record levels for months.
Deep ocean temperature, a big player in global temperatures, behaves similarly, Burgess said.
Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen, often considered the godfather of global warming science, theorized last year that warming was accelerating. While most scientists contacted by the AP said they suspected this was happening, others were adamant that the evidence so far supported only a steady, long-predicted increase.
“There is some evidence that the rate of warming over the past decade has been slightly faster than the previous decade, which meets the mathematical definition of acceleration,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. “But this is largely in line with predictions that warming will accelerate at a certain point, especially as particle pollution in the air decreases.”
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated that the Earth’s average temperature in 2023 will be 59.12 degrees (15.08 degrees Celsius). This is 0.27 degrees (0.15 degrees Celsius) warmer than the previous record set in 2016 and 2.43 degrees (1.35 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.
“It’s as if we’ve thrown ourselves down the ladder (of normal global warming temperature increases) into a slightly warmer regime,” said Russ Vose, chief of global monitoring for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. He said he sees the warming accelerating.
NASA and the UK Met Office found the warming since the mid-19th century to be slightly higher, at 2.5 degrees (1.39 degrees Celsius) and 2.63 degrees (1.46 degrees Celsius), respectively. Records date back to 1850.
Combining measurements released Friday with Japanese and European calculations released earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization determined that 2023 will be 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.
Most climate scientists saw little hope of halting warming at the 1.5-degree target called for in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aimed to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.
“I don’t think it’s realistic for us to limit warming to (a multi-year average) of 1.5°C,” Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis wrote in an email. “Technically possible, but politically impossible.”
“The slow pace of climate action, and the persistent disinformation that drives it, has never been about a lack of science or a lack of solutions: it has always been, and continues to be, about a lack of political will,” said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Guardian. Nature conservation.
Both NASA and NOAA said the last 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, were the 10 hottest years they had measured. The global temperature record was broken for the third time in the last eight years. Randall Cerveny, an Arizona State University scientist who helps coordinate WMO’s recordkeeping, said the real concern is not that a record was broken last year, but that it is being broken too often.
“What is most concerning, to me, is the constant pace of change,” Cerveny said.
“This is just a small fraction of what we can expect in the future, especially if we continue to fail to cut carbon dioxide fast enough,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald.
That’s why many scientists contacted by The Associated Press are concerned.
“I’ve been worried since the early 1990s,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. “I’m more worried than ever. My concern that global emissions are heading in the wrong direction grows with each passing year.”
___
Find more information about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment.
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on X: @borenbears
______
The Associated Press’s climate and environment coverage receives funding from many private organizations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage at AP.org.