As Expected, 2023 Was The Hottest Year In The Instrumental Record; As El Nino Continues In 2024, What's Next?

As a year of surprising global warmth came to a close, a record high annual average temperature was already assured. Now, some scientists are already speculating: 2024 could be even hotter.

After all, vast swaths of Earth’s oceans were record-warm for most of 2023, and it would take as many months for them to release that heat. An intense episode of the planet-warming El Niño climate pattern is nearing its peak, and the last time that happened, it pushed the planet to record warmth in 2016. That suggests there will be no imminent slowdown in a surge of global warmth that has supercharged the decades-long trend tied to fossil fuel emissions.

It could be enough to, for the first time on an annual basis, push average planetary temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial, 19th century levels, according to Britain’s Met Office. The planet came closer than ever to that dreaded threshold in recent months, providing a first glimpse of a world where sustained levels of that heat would fuel new weather extremes.

But such climate trends can be difficult to predict with precision. After all, at the start of 2023, scientists predicted the year would end as one of the planet’s warmest on record. They didn’t expect it to set so many new precedents — and by record-wide margins. “The fact that we are in uncharted territory, we don’t actually know what will happen next,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/02/record-heat-2024-el-nino/