According to climate experts from the United Nations (UN), 2023 will probably be the warmest year since industrialization. This is what the World Weather Organization (WMO) reports in its preliminary report on the state of the global climate at the start of the COP 28 global climate conference in Dubai. The gap to the previously hottest years of 2016 and 2020 was so great by the end of October that November and December could practically not change anything. The definitive report will not come out until the first half of 2024.
Up to and including October, the global average temperature was 1.4 degrees Celsius above the average for the years 1850 to 1900. So far, 2016 is considered the hottest year with plus 1.3 degrees above pre-industrial levels. 2020 was close behind.
In July, August, September and October of the current year, global average temperatures each reached a monthly record. What was particularly noticeable was that the global average sea surface temperature has recorded maximum values for every month since April.
Experts from the US weather agency NOAA and the EU climate change service Copernicus have already said several times that 2023 will almost certainly be the warmest year.
WMO chief Petteri Taalas spoke of a “deafening cacophony of broken records.” He said: “We must act now to limit the risks of an increasingly inhospitable climate in this century and in the centuries to come.”
Climate experts hope that the more than 190 countries in Dubai will adopt measures for a faster transformation of the economy towards climate-neutral growth. In a video message, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on them to take drastic steps to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. “There is still hope,” he said.
The situation in Germany
In Germany, the summer of 2023 felt like a mixed bag for many people, but the unstable weather and rain in this country do not change the fact that it was far too warm. It is virtually certain that, in terms of global average temperature, 2023 was the hottest year since the beginning of industrialization (1850-1900). Possibly even for tens of thousands of years. Of course, there were no measurements back then, but science can draw conclusions about the climate in ancient times by analyzing ancient air bubbles deep in the ice.
“Actually, we in Europe have felt like we have been in a state of emergency since the hot summer of 2018,” says Helge Gößling, climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, to the German Press Agency. Among other things, he mentions several unusually dry and warm summers and the heavy rain in the Ahr Valley. “But we have to expect that we are in the new normal.” For him it is clear that climate change is a serious threat to humanity.
According to data from the German Weather Service in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022, the average temperature in Germany was already more than 2.5 degrees Celsius above the level of 1881, when systematic weather recordings began. This is significantly more than the global average. This is because the global value includes temperatures over ocean surfaces, which have so far risen less sharply than over land. Globally, the warmest year so far was 2016, with plus 1.3 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).
“From a regional perspective, we in Central Europe are getting off relatively lightly when it comes to climate change,” says Gößling. In the Mediterranean region the situation is already more precarious with heat and drought. “We shouldn’t sugarcoat the situation here,” warns Gößling.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions were to fall rapidly now, humanity would have to prepare for decades of extreme events. “The negative trend will continue into the 2060s,” says Petteri Taalas. This is due to the greenhouse gases that have already been emitted and remain in the atmosphere for so long. “And we’ve already lost the battle with the mountain glaciers,” he says. “We expect them to be completely melted by the end of the century.” However, harmful greenhouse gas emissions must now urgently be reduced so that today’s children and their descendants can experience a better climate from the 2060s onwards.
The end of climate-damaging fossil energy – from coal, oil, gas – is the greatest lever against climate change. But the other big lever, the handling of land, is underestimated, says Gößling. “It’s crazy that 75 percent of the world’s agricultural land is used either as pasture or to grow feed crops for animals.” More plant-based food requires less space for the same amount of protein and calories. Forests can absorb more CO₂ than pastures. “In addition to a significantly better climate balance, a return to more natural areas would also have the extremely important effect of helping significantly against the loss of biodiversity.”
If, as hoped, the countries in Dubai impose significantly stronger climate protection measures, Taalas sees a different world in the 2030s in the best case scenario: “Then we will no longer use coal as an energy source, the majority of cars worldwide will be electric, we will use more public transport , we eat less meat and rice, which cause large methane emissions, we stop the deforestation of tropical rainforests and accelerate the transfer of technology that enables emerging countries to grow in a climate-neutral manner.”
No one can yet predict whether next summer in Germany will be hot or dry. Globally, however, it could be even warmer than this year. “I estimate the chances to be 50:50,” says Gößling. This is due to the El Niño weather phenomenon that began this year. It heats up the Pacific every few years and increases the global average temperature by around 0.2 degrees. As a rule, this only becomes apparent in the year after it occurs, which would then be 2024.
But this time it could be different. In 2023 there were random fluctuations in the weather in spring, says Gößling. Weak trade winds led to strong warming of the sea surface, especially in the North Atlantic, which significantly increased the global average temperature. “The weak trade winds don’t necessarily have anything to do with climate change,” he says. It is therefore not certain that the Atlantic will be as warm again in 2024 as it was in 2023.