A cold front is moving across the United States, bringing arctic conditions to parts of the Midwest, along with snow and high winds elsewhere. This is the time of the year when climate skeptics regularly declare that global warming is a hoax and carry snowballs into the Senate chamber to illustrate the astounding fact that winter exists.
Anyone skeptical of climate change this year must have a very short memory because the United States is coming off the hottest December in its history. Temperature records fell over many days and multiple states. As far north as Wisconsin, Americans got a Christmas more suitable for riding bikes than sledding.
December wasn’t alone. Practically every month in 2023 was a record-hot month, making it no surprise that 2023 was the hottest year in human history.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service is one of a series of agencies created by the European Union to monitor events on Earth. Its official report made clear just how extraordinary 2023 was, even when compared with other warm years in the recent past.
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2023 was confirmed to be the warmest year since records have been kept.
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The average temperature was 0.17 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record year of 2016.
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The average temperature was 0.60 C higher than the average between 1991-2020.
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The average temperature was 1.48 C higher than the average between 1850-1900.
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Every month from June to December was warmer than in any past year.
Every single day in 2023 was over 1 C warmer than in the 1850-1900 “pre-industrial” period, and roughly half of the days were more than 1.5 C warmer. Highlighting how hot it was near the end of the year, there were two days in November that, for the first time on record, were more than 2 C warmer than that pre-industrial line.
If those 1.5 C and 2 C values seem familiar, it’s likely because those are the numbers that climate agreements have been trying to avoid. In 2023, the world fell just 0.02 C short of reaching the first of these lines.
A 2019 estimate from NASA indicated that if the world reaches the 1.5 C value, global sea levels could rise by 0.33 feet (about 4 inches). That may seem minor, but it’s enough to bring disastrous flooding to coastal cities. It’s also enough to bring “beach erosion, salinization of water supplies and other impacts on humans and ecological systems,” according to NASA’s report.
Someone might want to bring that up with Fox News’ Steve Doocy.
Reach 2 C, and the rise doubles to 0.66 feet. That’s enough to bring some serious destruction, flooding roads, farmland, and subways, and seriously impacting every habitat along the coast. Maybe that’s why Florida Republicans are looking at a “socialist model” to fight rising insurance costs.
In any case, it’s good to know that the leader of the Republicans is taking this seriously.
Trump has a record of telling people not to worry about sea level rise, falsely claiming that models show an increase of “one-eighth of an inch” over the next 200 to 300 years. He’s also said that rising sea levels would only give us “a little more beachfront property.” Those are pretty convenient talking points for someone trying to peddle a lot of that property.
Considering that Trump has said one of the two reasons he would be a dictator on “day one” is so that he can “drill, drill, drill,” anyone shopping for property might want to check for something a foot, or 10, higher.
Even the cold weather America is experiencing at the moment could be directly related to the way the climate crisis is warming the Arctic. That warming disrupts the polar vortex, a system of looping wind currents that usually keeps the coldest air concentrated over the polar region. Warmer temperatures in the Arctic can cause that system to split, sending arms of frigid air spilling down across areas to the south. As the temperatures at the poles have risen, these vortex events have increased.
If it seems like everything gets blamed on the climate crisis, that’s because the crisis is just that big. It’s a genuine existential threat to our civilization, and too many are still willing to ignore it even when they’ve lived through the hottest year on record.
Meanwhile, many experts expect 2024 to smash those new records. The combination of a strong El Niño current and continuation of the trends that started in 2023 is bringing signs that hot as the year just past may have been, what lies ahead may leave it in literal dust.
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