Climate change: In 2023 the hottest year has been since the start of the recordings!

Climate change: In 2023 the hottest year has been since the start of the recordings!

An alarming report by the EU climate converter Copernicus reveals that 2023 will be the first year since the beginning of the records, in which the global average temperature is more than 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level. With a forecast temperature of at least 1.55 degrees, this year will be the warmest in history. UN General Secretary António Guterres had already spoken of a "climate collapse" in 2023, and the latest data confirms this dark prediction.

The Vice Director of Copernicus, Samantha Burgess, described the current figures as "new milestone" and demands that they should serve as an incentive for the upcoming climate conference COP29. But the climate scientist Mojib Latif remains skeptical: "The cops are obviously not effective," he says and warns of another failure in Baku. While the 2015 global community in Paris determined the goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees, the 1.5-degree limit is increasingly being considered unrealistic.

The urgency of net zero emissions

The discussion about the 1.5-degree threshold is considered irrelevant by experts. Climate researchers Anders Levermann emphasizes that the decisive goal must be net zero emissions. Without an immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature will continue to increase. Latif warns that the CO2 content in the atmosphere increases inexorably and that the earth can increasingly absorb less greenhouse gases. Even with the immediate stop of all emissions, global warming could increase by another half degree in the coming decades.

The alarming data from Copernicus show a clear trend: in October 2023 the average temperature was 15.25 degrees, which is 0.8 degrees above the average of 1991 to 2020 and 1.65 degrees higher than in the pre -industrial period. The oceans, which cover 71 percent of the earth's surface, play a crucial role in temperature regulation and are closely linked to the record values ​​of the air temperature. The Copernicus data are based on billions of measurements worldwide and show that the earth is on a dangerous course.