For anyone who even cursorily follows climate news, today’s announcement from the World Meteorological Organization that the global temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record should be no surprise. What the WMO didn’t say was it could be the coolest year anyone now alive will see in the future.
The WMO report confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, with the global average near-surface temperature at 1.45 °Celsius (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.12 °C) above the pre-industrial baseline. It was the warmest ten-year period on record.
“Never have we been so close – albeit on a temporary basis at the moment – to the 1.5° C lower limit of the Paris Agreement on climate change.” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “The WMO community is sounding the Red Alert to the world.”
“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis – as witnessed by growing food insecurity and population displacement, and biodiversity loss,” [she said].
Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the report, told The Guardian: “If we do not stop burning fossil fuels, the climate will continue to warm, making life more dangerous, more unpredictable, and more expensive for billions of people on earth.”
Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at University College London, said, “This is, sadly, only the beginning of much worse impacts to come, given carbon emissions are still rising and there is continued massive new investment in extracting fossil fuels.”
The Guardian reported:
The report found that marine heatwaves seared one third of the world’s ocean on an average day in 2023, harming vital ecosystems and food systems. By the end of the year, just 10% of the ocean had escaped heatwave conditions.
Climate change also worsened extreme weather events that left people hungry and forced them from their homes, even if it was not the main factor in their suffering. The number of people who are “acutely” food insecure has more than doubled since 2019 to 333 million people in 2023, the report found, concentrated in Africa and south Asia.
While weather and climate extremes may not be the root cause of food insecurity, they are exacerbating factors, according to the report.
The WMO found “a glimmer of hope” when it comes to renewable energy growth. New renewable capacity added in 2023 was nearly 50% above the 2022 gain, the report found.
In a statement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Humanity’s actions are scorching the earth. 2023 was a mere preview of the catastrophic future that awaits if we don’t act now. We must respond to record-breaking temperature rises with path-breaking action. We can still avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But only if we act now with the ambition required to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and deliver climate justice.”
While there’s no doubt that strong action now can lessen the impacts of the climate crisis, a growing number of scientists believe that a permanent breach of the 1.5 degrees goal is now inevitable.
Meanwhile, the United States is producing more oil than any country in history, fossil fuel companies continue to put tens of billions into exploration and new drilling, automakers in America and Europe work to delay the electrification of the transportation sector, and local authorities in the U.S. work to block renewables projects.