This year could be hotter under El Nino’s influence than record-shattering last year, the UN said on Friday, as it urged drastic emissions cuts to combat climate change.
New monthly temperature records were set every month between June and December last year, and the pattern is likely to continue due to the warming El Nino weather phenomenon, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that there is a one-in-three chance that next year would be warmer than last year — and a 99 percent certainty that next year would rank among the five warmest years ever.
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NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that 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 said, adding that there were hints of “mysterious” changes to Earth’s climate systems, that would nonetheless require more data to confirm or refute.
July and August last year were the two hottest months ever recorded, the UN weather and climate agency said, as it officially confirmed that last year had been the warmest year on record “by a huge margin.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels — and 1.5°C, if possible.
The annual average global temperature last year was 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) — although one of the six datasets it relies on, the nonprofit research organization Berkeley Earth, placed the figure as high as 1.54°C, the WMO said.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said that El Nino, which emerged in the middle of last year, is likely to turn up the heat even further this year.
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,” Saulo said. “Given that El Nino usually has the biggest impact on global temperatures after it peaks, 2024 could be even hotter.”
The global surface temperature last year was 1.18°C above the 20th-century average, and was hotter than the next warmest year, 2016, by a record-setting margin of 0.15°C, the NOAA said.
The arctic, northern North America, central Asia, the North Atlantic and the eastern tropical Pacific were particularly hotter, it said.
Climate change is now “the biggest challenge that humanity faces,” Saulo said.
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