2023 was world's hottest year on record; warmest in 100,000 years

New Delhi: The year 2023 ended as the warmest year in history, European scientists confirmed on Tuesday, months after a global body of meteorologists predicted such a possibility.

The year that went by witnessed an average worldwide temperature of 14.98 degrees Celsius, which is 0.6 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average and 0.17 degrees Celsius higher than 2016, the previous warmest year.

Worryingly, for the first time, the average temperature of each day of 2023 was one degree Celsius higher than the pre-industrial level (1850-1900) and in half of the days, the temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher. There were two days in November when the temperature was two degrees Celsius higher.

"Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years," said Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting.

The global average temperature for 2023 was 1.48 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial level, pushing the earth tantalisingly close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius guard rail set by the Paris agreement of 2015.

The global climate change prevention treaty, agreed to by most of the nations, decided on limiting the global warming level up to 1.5 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial level to prevent dangerous consequences of climate change.

The achievement in the last eight years, however, was too little, too late as the last UN climate summit in Dubai (COP28) showed much more was needed to be done to curb the impacts of global warming.

The new C3S report comes weeks after the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said in a Nov 30 provisional report that 2023 was set to go into the history as the warmest year with a record sea surface temperatures and sea level rise, and a record low in Antarctica sea ice. The European report is on the same line.

2023 saw massive fires in Canada, extreme droughts in the Horn of Africa or the Middle East, unprecedented summer heatwaves in Europe, the United States and China, along with record winter warmth in Australia and South America. The year was also the second warmest one for India.

According to the India Meteorological Department, 2023 was the second warmest on record for India since 1901 while August and February were the warmest in the last 123 years.

All the five warmest years in Indian weather history were recorded within the last 14 years, suggesting a rapid increase in surface temperature and change in weather patterns. They are 2016, 2023, 2009, 2017 and 2010 (in descending order).