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NOAA, NASA Confirm Last Decade Was Hottest in Human History
"NASA and NOAA's global temperature report confirms what billions of people around the world experienced last year; we are facing a climate crisis," declared Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator. "From extreme heat, to wildfires, to rising sea levels, we can see our Earth is changing."
"It's driven primarily by our fossil fuel emissions, and we're seeing the impacts in heatwaves, intense rainfall, and coastal flooding."
NASA, whose records date back to 1880, found that Earth's average surface temperature last year was about 1.2°C above the average for the agency's baseline period, which is 1951-1980, and 1.4°C above the late 19th-century average.
"Every month from June through December 2023 came in as the hottest month on record. July ranked as the hottest month ever recorded," NASA noted in an article explaining last year's record heat, which addresses greenhouse gases, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), warming oceans, decreasing aerosols, and an undersea volcanic eruption.
"The exceptional warming that we're experiencing is not something we've seen before in human history," emphasized Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "It's driven primarily by our fossil fuel emissions, and we're seeing the impacts in heatwaves, intense rainfall, and coastal flooding."
NOAA, which has a climate record back to 1850, similarly found that the average land and ocean surface temperature last year was 1.18°C above the 20th century and 1.35°C above the preindustrial average, or 1850-1900. Sarah Kapnick, the agency's chief scientist, said that "after seeing the 2023 climate analysis, I have to pause and say that the findings are astounding."
"Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA's 174-year climate record—it was the warmest by far," she highlighted. "A warming planet means we need to be prepared for the impacts of climate change that are happening here and now, like extreme weather events that become both more frequent and severe."
Both agencies found that the 10 hottest years in their records have all been in the past decade. NOAA pointed out that there is a one-in-three chance that this year will be even warmer than 2023, and a 99% chance that 2024 will be among the five hottest years.
"We will continue to see records broken and extreme events grow until emissions go to zero," Kapnick warned. "Government policy can address both emissions, but also actions to reduce climate impacts by building resilience."
NASA and NOAA's findings are in line with not only scientists' predictions amid extreme conditions last year but also data released Tuesday by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and Friday by the United Kingdom's Met Office—which has records back to 1850 and found that the global average temperature for 2023 was 1.46°C above the preindustrial baseline.
"It is striking that the temperature record for 2023 has broken the previous record set in 2016 by so much because the main effect of the current El Niño will come in 2024," said Adam Scaife, a principal fellow at the U.K. agency. "Consistent with this, the Met Office's 2024 temperature forecast shows this year has strong potential to be another record-breaking year."
El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of the climate phenomenon ENSO in the Pacific Ocean. As Common Dreams reported Thursday, a study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences found that 2023 was the hottest year on record for the world's oceans, which capture an estimated 91% of excess heat from greenhouse gases.
Government scientists were not the only ones who responded with alarm to the new climate data this week. Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Friday, "The latest data confirms heartbreaking and unprecedented scientific truths: The last decade has been the hottest in human history while heat-trapping emissions are continuing to rise."
"During this consequential decade, nations across the globe must swiftly reduce their heat-trapping emissions and enact widespread climate adaptation policies to limit the devastating climate harms and the toll they take on humans and ecosystems," she stressed, noting the "unrelenting onslaught of climate impacts" communities have already ensured. "Continuing to make only incremental policy changes will further jeopardize the safety of people around the world, especially those on the frontlines of the climate crisis."
Dahl argued that "as the largest historical emitter of global carbon emissions and the wealthiest nation, the United States has a moral imperative to lead on aggressive climate action. The science is clear: Transformative and comprehensive climate action, including a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and investments in resilience, are essential to ensure a livable future for generations to come."
"It's time for U.S. policymakers to place the needs of people over ill-gotten corporate profits by resisting and rejecting the potent allure of greenwashing narratives and false solutions that the fossil fuel industry has long pushed upon elected officials."
"Fortunately, the United States already has proven technologies to do this, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy storage, at its fingertips," she added. "It's time for U.S. policymakers to place the needs of people over ill-gotten corporate profits by resisting and rejecting the potent allure of greenwashing narratives and false solutions that the fossil fuel industry has long pushed upon elected officials."
While making historic progress on climate during his first term, U.S. President Joe Biden has also faced criticism from scientists and campaigners for backing some false solutions, enabling more fossil fuel projects, and skipping COP28, the United Nations climate summit held late last year.
Global scientists called COP28—which was led by an oil CEO in the United Arab Emirates—a "tragedy for the planet" because its final agreement did not endorse a phaseout of fossil fuels, and have already expressed concerns about COP29, given host country Azerbaijan's recent announcement that the upcoming conference will also be overseen by an oil executive.
'No More Time to Waste': WMO Analysis Finds Europe Is Fastest-Warming Continent
The publication was presented at the 6th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Dublin, Ireland. Its key findings "paint a somber picture for Europe last year," according to C3S, which noted that the analysis shows the continent "is the fastest-warming of all the WMO regions, warming twice as much as the global average since the 1980s."
The other WMO regions are Africa; Asia; South America; North America, Central America, the Caribbean; and the Southwest Pacific.
"These supercharged extremes are wreaking havoc on livelihoods and infrastructure, including (ironically) the growing renewable energy sector."
In Europe last year, "the annual average temperature was between the second and fourth highest on record, depending on the data set used, and summer was the warmest," the report states. Countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom had their hottest year ever recorded—and though 2022 was "characterized by warm conditions, some areas were affected by cold spells and heavy snowfall."
"Precipitation was below average across much of the region," which "combined with high summer temperatures, contributed to the largest loss of glacial ice recorded in the European Alps," the document details. "The Greenland ice sheet continued to lose mass during 2022, and in September periods of exceptional warmth led to widespread surface melt."
"Sea-surface temperatures across the North Atlantic area of the WMO Europe region were the warmest on record and large portions of the region's seas were affected by strong or even severe and extreme marine heatwaves," the publication continues. "Drought also affected much of the region, particularly during spring and summer. The combination of dry conditions and extreme heat fueled numerous wildfires and the second-largest burnt area in the region on record."
C3S Director Carlo Buontempo highlighted in a statement that "the record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in Europe."
Specifically, emergency events across Europe last year directly affected 156,000 people and led to at least 16,365 deaths. Heatwaves represented only 13% of events but were tied to 99.6% of deaths. Floods, droughts, landslides, and wildfires were also reported, but 57% of events were storms, which caused 98% of $2.13 billion in total economic damage.
"Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate," Buontempo said. "Our current understanding of the climate system and its evolution informs us that these kinds of events are part of a pattern that will make heat stress extremes more frequent and more intense across the region."
Other experts and campaigners who responded to the report shared similar concerns for the future in a world still heavily reliant on fossil fuels and other sources of planet-heating pollution.
"This annual report is just a snapshot of the state of Europe's climate. It provides a sobering picture," said Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the U.K.'s University of Reading. "Extreme weather killed 16,000 people in Europe last year, mostly due to the effects of the summer heat. The loss of ice from the Alps was the largest ever recorded and comes on top of a downward spiral. Spain's ongoing megadrought means that water reserves are now so low that many farmers are unable to grow crops, which has a knock-on effect on food prices."
Cloke's colleague, climate science professor Richard Allan, noted that based on "the highest quality global and regional data," the analysis "finds 2.3°C of European warming since the Industrial Revolution and this is already increasing the severity of hot, dry, and wet weather events—these supercharged extremes are wreaking havoc on livelihoods and infrastructure, including (ironically) the growing renewable energy sector that is identified in the report as helping to tackle the root cause of warming by reducing the reliance on greenhouse gas emitting coal, oil, and gas."
"While pledges to tackle climate change could keep global warming below 2°C above preindustrial conditions, in the same ballpark as the Paris climate agreement targets, when only the most credible pledges are included, warming is expected to be more than 2.5°C by the end of the century," he added. "More ambitious and credible actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions and continued monitoring of these emissions and the heating they inflict are essential to avoid worsening damage from climate change across the continents and throughout the oceans."
The WMO-C3S report states that "wind and solar power represented 22.3% of European Union electricity in 2022, overtaking fossil gas (20%) for the first time. More electricity was generated by these two renewable resources than by any other power source."
Welcoming that positive takeaway, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas stressed that "increasing use of renewables and low-carbon energy sources is crucial to reduce dependence on fossil fuels."
Taalas also emphasized that climate services, or the provision and use of climate information in decision-making, "play a key role in ensuring the resilience of energy systems to climate-related shocks, in planning operations, and in informing measures to increase energy efficiency."
Albert Klein Tank, director of the U.K.'s Met Office Hadley Center for Climate Science and Services, said in a statement that "the data in this report makes a vital contribution to the understanding of the changes we are seeing in Europe's climate."
"The data in this report makes a vital contribution to the understanding of the changes we are seeing in Europe's climate."
"Met Office research indicates that European citizens will need to prepare for new extremes," he warned, pointing out that the Italian island Sicily endured 48.8°C (119.84°F) in 2021 and Europe could soon see 50°C (122°F) for the first time. "A new record is likely at some stage soon—maybe even this year—and it is most likely to occur in the Mediterranean region during a period bringing in air from North Africa, where temperatures have also been rising markedly."
The Met Office on Friday released data showing that global sea surface temperatures for April and May were the highest on record for those months stretching back to 1850. In response, University of Bristol earth sciences professor Daniela Schmidt said that "the extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Niño."
"While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures [in] this part of the North Atlantic, they are unheard of," Schmidt added. "As long as we are not dramatically cutting emissions, these heatwaves will continue to destroy our ecosystems."
The ocean revelations came a day after C3S announced that global mean surface air temperatures for early June were higher than previous data for the month "by a substantial margin," which Melissa Lazenby, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Sussex, called a "stern warning sign that we are heading into very warm uncharted territory."
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