This year on track to be the hottest on record, say scientists

 

The world is set to be hotter in 2023 than in any other year on record, scientists have said, before a landmark climate summit this month.

“We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average,” said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher.”

The Copernicus scientists found that last month was the hottest October on record globally, with temperatures 1.7C above what they were thought to have been during the average October in the late 1800s.

By burning fossil fuels and destroying nature, humans have pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere that have raised the temperature of the planet by 1.2C since the industrial revolution. The global temperature anomaly for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in their dataset, the scientists found, behind only the month before.

·       What else is happening? The world’s fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” and said they “throw humanity’s future into question”.

·       Is there any good climate news? China has published a long-awaited methane reduction plan, a sign it is moving closer towards a new climate agreement with the US. The two countries may soon break ground on the new agreement before a presidential meeting next week and the UN’s climate conference, Cop28.

-The Guardian