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. They said even with a faster warming rate they don’t see evidence of significant acceleration in human-caused climate change beyond increased fossil fuel burning.
It’s pretty much explained by the buildup of carbon dioxide from rising fossil fuel use, he and a co-author said. On a larger 10-year time frame, which scientists prefer to single years, the world has warmed about 1.19 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, the report in It’s not the end of the world or humanity if temperatures blow past the 1.5 limit, but it will be quite bad, scientists said.show massive changes to Earth’s ecosystem are more likely to kick in between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius of warming, including eventual loss of the planet’s coral reefs, Arctic sea ice, species of plants and animals — along with nastier extreme weather events that kill people.
“Acceleration if it were to happen would be even worse, like hitting a global tipping point, it would be probably the worst scenario,” Seneviratne said. “But what is happening is already extremely bad and it is having major impacts already now. We are in the middle of a crisis.”