Where are we at the end of 2023?
The end of the year is almost upon us. It is an opportune time to take stock and assess the progress that has been made in tackling environmental issues in 2023. It probably won’t surprise you to learn the news is mostly bad - with some of the extreme weather this year we’ve been served a reminder of what is to come (more on that tomorrow) if we don’t redouble efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in 2024. However there are some reasons to be hopeful - we’ll start the New Year on a positive note with an article on those on Monday.
Here are some of the highlights:
2023 is on track to be the warmest year ever recorded. UPDATE: The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed 2023 was the hottest year ever, 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than the world before the Industrial Revolution. On 17 November the average temperature was even higher, over 2 degrees more than the historic norm, and on around one third of days in 2023 the temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees more.
The Northern Hemisphere summer (June, July and August) was the hottest ever recorded - almost a third of a degree more than the previous record in 2019. This article in The Washington Post summarises some of the effects of the extreme heat - events that are likely to become more and more common.
Global sea surface temperatures hit record highs in August.
Antarctic sea ice levels were the lowest ever recorded in February.
The damage caused by extreme weather events has cost an average of $140 billion a year from 2000 to 2019.
Climate Change Tracker estimates that we will blow through our carbon budget to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees (as agreed in the Paris Agreement) in 2025. A study published in Nature Climate Change recommends that greenhouse gas emissions need to hit net zero in around 2035 for there to be a 90% of keeping warming to below 2 degrees. The current target many countries are working towards is 2050, which would give a 66% chance.
Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels were projected to be 1.1% higher than 2022, a record high. As a result, daily atmospheric carbon dioxide readings at Mauna Loa continued to increase (UPDATE: The last reading for 2023 was 421.48 parts per million (ppm) - a decade ago it was below 400 ppm and a safe level is considered to be below 350 ppm.
Both the Global Stocktake completed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the State of Climate Action 2023 found that the gap between climate action and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees needs to be closed urgently and that countries are falling behind on almost every policy required to cut emissions.