In bad news for pretty much all species that aren’t cold-blooded, scientists have declared that 2023 is on track to be the hottest year globally since records started. And no prizes are being given for guessing the accused cause of the unwanted achievement: human-driven climate change.
The scientists at the Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that October 2023 was the hottest October on record, with global heats increasing 1.7 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial temperatures.
That depressing announcement has been followed up with an even more distressing one: that this year will “with near certainty” be the hottest on record, as confirmed by the Copernicus deputy director Dr Sarah Burgess.
“This makes me nervous about what is to come. When we combine all the data together, the global air temperature records, the global sea surface temperature records, the global sea ice records, all of these indications together really show us that our climate is changing at a very rapid pace and we have to adapt to the climate that we are facing right now,” warned Burgess.
Hold up, you’re telling me the world’s climate is changing? That there’s a warming happening globally? Get out of town. That’s wild, who would have possibly foreseen that. What an inconvenient truth.
The cause of the increasing global temperature is said to be human-led climate change, caused by burning of fossil fuels and C02 emissions that have been warming Earth’s atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
Of course this fact is up for debate, as long as you feel like arguing with literally every respectable scientist on the planet and using facts you found on dodgy Facebook articles.
Should 2023 continue on the trajectory that scientists expect it to follow, it will take over the current hottest year on record, 2016, which had a global increase of 1.69 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial temperatures.
2016 was also the last time Australia experienced an El Niño summer, so if you remember how unbearably hot that was, this is even worse.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference Of Parties (COP28) is set to take place in Dubai from November 30, where world leaders will meet to discuss their aims for how to reduce the warming.
The Paris Climate Accords set by the United Nations in 2015 aim to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” as well as attempting “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”
Burgess hopes that even though 2023 has seen global temperatures already exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, that now decision makers and world leaders will feel “the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into COP28.”
Anthony Albanese is expected to attend COP28, after being controversially absent from last year’s COP27. Scott Morrison was criticised for stating he would not attend COP26 in Glasgow, until he was internationally mocked and ended up attending.
