Scientists sure 2023 to be hottest in 125,000 years as COP28 draws near

Scientists have predicted that 2023 will be the hottest year on record for the planet surpassing the extreme heat record of 2016, ahead of this month's historic climate meeting COP28.

“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.”

With temperatures 1.7C higher than what was assumed to have been the typical October in the late 1800s, Copernicus scientists discovered last month that it was the warmest October on record worldwide.

The hottest October ever recorded was October 2023.

Displaying the anomaly in worldwide surface air temperature for each October between 1940 and 2023. The difference between a specific month's temperature and the average from 1991 to 2020 is known as the temperature anomaly.

After the Industrial Revolution, humanity has increased the planet's temperature by 1.2C by releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere via the combustion of fossil fuels and the destruction of the natural world. 

The scientists discovered that October 2023 had the second-highest worldwide temperature anomaly in their dataset, only surpassed by the previous month.

“The fact that we’re seeing this record hot year means record human suffering,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “Within this year, extreme heatwaves and droughts made much worse by these extreme temperatures have caused thousands of deaths, people losing their livelihoods, being displaced etc. These are the records that matter.

“That is why the Paris agreement is a human rights treaty, and not keeping to the goals in it, is violating human rights on a vast scale.”

Leaders from across the world pledged eight years ago at a meeting in Paris to attempt to halt global warming by 1.5C by the end of the century. However, the measures in place are designed to raise the temperature by around 2.4C.

Akshay Deoras, a meteorology research scientist at the University of Reading, said: “The sizzling October 2023 is another unfortunate example that shows how temperature records are getting shattered by a humongous margin. Global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean are hitting the planet really hard.”

Scientists were astounded by the record temperatures last month. The extraordinary temperatures are anticipated to have been caused by a combination of variables such as a decrease in sulphur pollution, a volcanic eruption in Tonga, and the return of El Niño, a natural weather trend.

Although El Niño conditions were still developing, according to Copernicus, the temperature anomalies were not as high as they were during the previous two major episodes in 1997 and 2015.