Researchers believe 2023 could become the hottest year on record. Photo:Ahmer Kalam/ Unsplash
Researchers keeping an eye on global temperatures are sounding the alarm after a record setting year. It’s being called an “ominous sign” of what’s to come in the face of an El Niño event that could make 2023 the hottest year ever recorded.
So far in the month of June, average temperatures around the planet are 1.8F above levels recorded for every June back to 1979. While we’re only halfway through the month at the time of this writing, the patterns climate scientists are using show that global heating is increasing.
In early June, NOAA announced that El Niño had officially arrived. It came after three consecutive La Niña years — a rare phenomenon known as a “Triple Dip” — and it’s predicted to be a real doozy.
“The really big ones reverberate all over the planet with extreme droughts, floods, heatwaves, and storms,” NOAA’s Dr. Mike McPhaden said at the time. “If it happens, we’ll need to buckle up. It could also fizzle out. We should be watchful and prepared either way.”
According to Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation arm, “Global-mean surface air temperatures for the first days of June 2023 were the highest in the ERA5 data record for early June by a substantial margin, following a May during which sea-surface temperatures were at unprecedented levels for the time of year.” ERA5 provides hourly estimates of a large number of atmospheric, land, and oceanic climate variables.
El Niño, coupled with the long-term warming trends boosted by our fossil fuel consumption, will likely give a serious boost to global temperatures. As El Niño heats up sections of the Pacific Ocean, weather events increase in severity.
“The global surface temperature anomaly is at or near record levels right now, and 2023 will almost certainly be the warmest year on record,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, to The Guardian. “That is likely to be true for just about every El Niño year in the future as well, as long as we continue to warm the planet with fossil fuel burning and carbon pollution.”
Climate-wise, this year has not been a good one for many regions of the Earth. Record heatwaves have slammed places like India, China, Thailand, Laos, Spain, and even Siberia. Canada is currently battling out-of-control wildfires from the west coast to the east, the latter of which blanketed portions of the U.S. Northeast with smoke.
Back in May, the World Meteorological Organization issued a dire warning that global temperatures are likely to keep rising in the coming years, leading to a high probability that we’ll exceed the 1.5C (2.7F) mark that has become a signal of a tipping point. While they’re already bad, heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and other climate impacts will become significantly worse.
It’s not just the temperatures on land, either. NOAA issued a report in May “confirming a second consecutive month of record high ocean surface temperatures.” The ocean, as you are aware, covers roughly 70 percent of the planet, and plays a starring role in regulating overall global temperatures.
“The oceans have been warming steadily but we are now seeing record temperatures which is certainly alarming given we are expecting El Niño to strengthen,” said Ellen Bartow-Gillies, a climate scientist at NOAA. “That will undoubtedly have an impact on the rest of the world.”
