Background for COP28 climate talks: the hottest year in history

This year is “almost certainly” the hottest year on record, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Thursday at COP28, the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where delegates from nearly 200 countries, including many heads of state and government, gathered .

The organization said 2023 will have been about 1.4 degrees Celsius, or about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, above the global average pre-industrial temperature from 1850 to 1990. The past nine years have collectively been the warmest in 174 years of recorded scientific observations, with the previous single-year records set in 2020 and 2016.

Although the data is yet to arrive before the end of the year, the organization is releasing a draft of it State of the global climate report this week to inform talks in Dubai, where diplomats and leaders are trying to negotiate plans to accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.

By highlighting the changes the planet is already undergoing, the scientific community wants to ensure that leaders at COP28 understand the urgency of climate change and the weight of their decisions, said Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Ekwurzel was not involved in the World Meteorological Organization report, but contributed to a similar report in the United States.

“The decision makers within international negotiations are in the driver’s seat of future climate change,” she said.

Summer in the Northern Hemisphere was disastrously hot for much of the world’s population, with July becoming the hottest month on record on Earth. Scientists found that extreme temperatures in North America and Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change from the burning of fossil fuels.

The true cost in lives and economic losses will not be clear for some time yet. But research in recent years reveals the steep price of global warming in general. It is estimated that more than 61,000 people will have died in Europe alone in 2022 due to heat waves.

More intense, concentrated bursts of rainfall are a result of climate change. In September, a powerful storm dumped heavy rain on the Mediterranean Sea, causing two dams in Libya to burst and killing thousands of people in the city of Derna. Earlier this year, the exceptionally long-lived Tropical Cyclone Freddy struck southern Africa, forming in early February and making final landfall in Mozambique and Malawi in mid-March. The storm killed more than 600 people in Malawi and displaced more than 600,000.

Another intense storm, Tropical Cyclone Mocha, hit Southeast Asia in May. The cyclone displaced more than 1 million people, including many Rohingya refugees who had already been displaced from Myanmar and were living in the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh.

The damage from these storms has seriously exacerbated food insecurity, the World Meteorological Organization noted.

In less dire conditions, high temperatures mean that people cannot work as many hours as normal. One study estimated that the agricultural, construction, manufacturing and service sectors in the United States lost more than 2.5 billion worker hours due to heat exposure in 2021. A separate analysis found that productivity losses due to extreme heat cost the U.S. economy about $100 billion in 2020.

These figures do not take into account what is lost from other climate-related disasters. This year’s record-breaking heat has contributed to a wave of wildfires around the world, especially in Canada, where more than 45 million hectares have burned and hundreds of thousands have evacuated their homes in the country’s worst recorded fire year. Smoke from the long fires affected millions more people in far-flung cities.

Nature has also paid a price, especially in the ocean, which has absorbed 90 percent of global warming so far. Sea surface temperatures reached new heights this year, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. In July, a buoy off the coast of Florida recorded a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Coral reefs in the region suffered massive deaths.

“Record global warming should send shivers down the spines of world leaders,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message to the Dubai conference on Thursday. “Today’s report shows we are in big trouble. Leaders must get us out, starting at COP28.”