Global warming may be 'worsening' as scientists explain record-shattering 2023 heat

A villager sprays water on his livestock to protect them from heat in Ballia district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, June 19, 2023. [AP Photo]

"There is some evidence that the rate of warming over the past decade or so is slightly faster than the decade or so previous - which meets the mathematical definition of acceleration," said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. "However, this too is largely in line with predictions" that warming would accelerate at a certain point, especially when particle pollution in the air decreases.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated that Earth in 2023 had an average temperature of 59.12 degrees (15.08 degrees Celsius). That's 0.27 degrees (0.15 degrees Celsius) warmer than the previous record set in 2016 and 2.43 degrees (1.35 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.

NASA and the United Kingdom Meteorological Office had the warming since the mid-19th century a bit higher at 2.5 degrees (1.39 degrees Celsius) and 2.63 degrees (1.46 degrees Celsius) respectively. Records go back to 1850.

The World Meteorological Organization, combining the measurements announced Friday with Japanese and European calculations released earlier this month, pegged 2023 at 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.

Many of the climate scientists saw little hope of stopping warming at the 1.5-degree goal called for in the 2015 Paris agreement that sought to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

"I do not consider it realistic that we can limit warming [averaged over several years] to 1.5C," wrote Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis in an email. "It is technically possible but politically impossible."

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, agreed. "The slow pace of climate action and the continued disinformation that catalyzes it has never been about lack of science or even lack of solutions; it has always been, and remains, about lack of political will."

NASA and NOAA said the last 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, have been the 10 hottest years they've measured. It's the third time in the last eight years that a global heat record was set.

Randall Cerveny, an Arizona State University scientist who helps coordinate record-keeping for the WMO, said the big worry isn't that a record was broken last year, but that they keep getting broken so frequently.