This year didn’t just shatter records. It changed the scales.
“The margins by which records are being broken this year have surprised not just me but [other climate scientists] that I trust, even my very unalarmist friends,” says Doug McNeall of the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, England.
As of late November, months of sweltering global temperatures easily put 2023 on track to be Earth’s hottest year since record keeping began about 150 years ago. The 12-month period from November 2022 through October 2023 is officially the hottest such period on record — a record that’s likely to be broken in 2024, according to the nonprofit group Climate Central (SN: 11/9/23).
Extreme heat waves baked many regions, which in turn fueled catastrophic wildfires. Ocean heat was off the charts, with global average sea surface temperatures sustaining record highs for much of the year. And in the water surrounding Antarctica, sea ice reached new lows.
2023-12-06 10:00:00
Link from www.sciencenews.org
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