FILE - A woman is silhouetted against the setting sun as triple-digit heat indexes continue in the Midwest, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. The rate Earth is warming hit an all-time high in 2023 with 92% of last year’s surprising record-shattering heat caused by humans, top scientists calculated. The rate Earth is warming hit an all-time high in 2023 with 92% of last year’s surprising record-shattering heat caused by humans, top scientists calculated.
“If you look at this world accelerating or going through a big tipping point, things aren’t doing that,” study lead author Piers Forster, a Leeds University climate scientist, said. “Things are increasing in temperature and getting worse in sort of exactly the way we predicted.” The team of authors — formed to provide annual scientific updates between the every seven- to eight-year major U.N. scientific assessments — determined last year was 1.43 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1850 to 1900 average with 1.31 degrees of that coming from human activity. The other 8% of the warming is due mostly to El Nino, the natural and temporary warming of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide and also a freak warming along the Atlantic and just other weather randomness.
That fits with earlier studies projecting Earth being committed or stuck to at least 1.5 degrees by early 2029 if emission trajectories don’t change. The actual hitting of 1.5 degrees could be years later, but it would be inevitable if all that carbon is used, Forster said. The year was within the range of what was predicted, albeit it was at the upper edge of the range, Seneviratne said.