It is official now. The year 2023 is all set to be the warmest year ever, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said, as climate negotiators and world leaders began their discussions at the annual climate change conference, COP28, in Dubai. Global average temperatures till October this year were about 1.4 degree Celsius higher than pre-industrial average, considerably more than the previous hottest year 2016 which was about 1.29 degree Celsius warmer. The gap is so large that data from November and December is unlikely to prevent 2023 from becoming the warmest ever, the WMO said. But that wasn’t the only bit of reality check that the WMO decided to offer to world leaders who have assembled in Dubai to make, possibly the last effort to prevent long-term breach of the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold. In its provisional State of the Global Climate report, an annual publication that it released at the COP meetings, the WMO said that the observed concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — were at their highest in 2022, the last year for which detailed data is available, and there were indications that these concentrations continued to increase in 2023 as well. Further, ocean heat content as well as global mean sea levels were at record highs, while the Antarctic sea-ice extent was at its lowest ever. Four months this year — June, July, August and September — broke previous respective monthly records for the highest temperature and July happened to become the warmest month ever. “The long-term increase in global temperatures is due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The shift from La Nina (phenomenon in Pacific Ocean), which lasted from mid-2020 to early 2023, to fully developed El Nino conditions by September 2023, likely explains some of the rise in the temperature from 2022 to 2023. However, some areas of unusual warming such as the Northwest Atlantic do not correspond to typical patterns of warming or cooling associated with El Nino. Other factors, which are still being investigated, may also have contributed to the exceptional warming from 2022 to 2023,” the WMO said in its State of the Global Climate Report. In the previous version of this report, in 2022, the WMO had said that there was at least a 50 per cent chance that the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold would be crossed before 2026 and that it was almost certain that one of the years till 2027 would turn out to be the warmest ever. The second prediction is coming true in 2023 itself and there were fears that the year might breach the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold as well. But the WMO assessment is that this year would only end up being about 1.4 degree Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average. However, it is only a matter of time before the 1.5 degree threshold is breached. It has already been breached repeatedly for daily average temperatures, at least 86 times till October this year, and weekly average temperatures have also topped the limit. The world is nowhere close to the kind of climate actions, including greenhouse gas emission cuts, that science says need to be taken by 2030 to prevent a long-term breach of the 1.5 degree threshold. The COP28 provides one last opportunity for the countries to strengthen climate actions in the immediate term and get as close to the required levels by 2030 as is possible.
