2024 starts with more record heat worldwide
The exceptional warmth that first enveloped the planet last summer will continue strongly until 2024: last month was the warmest January on record, the European Union's climate monitor announced on Thursday.
It was also the warmest January on record for the oceans, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The sea surface temperature was slightly lower than August 2023, the hottest month on record. And sea temperatures continued to rise in the first few days of February, surpassing daily records set last August.
The oceans absorb most of the extra heat that greenhouse gases trap in the atmosphere near the Earth's surface, making them a reliable indicator of how much and how quickly we are warming the planet. Warmer oceans provide more fuel for hurricanes and… atmospheric river storms and can disrupt marine life.
January sees average air temperatures, both on the continents and in the seas, surpassing all previous records for the time of year for eight months in a row. Overall, 2023 was the hottest year on Earth in more than a century and a half.
The main cause of all this heat is no mystery to scientists: Fossil fuel burning, deforestation and other human activities have been steadily pushing the mercury up for more than a century. The current El Niño weather cycle also releases more ocean heat into the atmosphere.
But exactly why Earth has been so hot for so long in recent months remains a matter of debate among researcherswho are waiting for more data to come in to see if other, less predictable and perhaps less understood factors might also be at work at the margins.
“Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to stop the rise in global temperatures,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said in a statement.
According to Copernicus data, January temperatures were well above average in eastern Canada, northwest Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, although much of the interior United States was colder than normal. Parts of South America were warmer than normal and dry, contributing to the recent wildfires devastated central Chile.
The intensity of recent underwater heat waves prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in December to add three new levels to its system of ocean heat warnings to indicate where corals may be bleaching or dying.
An El Niño pattern like the one currently observed in the Pacific Ocean is associated with warmer years for the planet, as well as a range of effects on rainfall and temperatures in specific regions.
But as humans warm the planet, the effects that forecasters could once confidently expect from El Niño on local temperatures are no longer as predictable, says Michelle L'Heureux, a NOAA scientist who studies El Niño and its opposite phase, La Niña. , studies.
“In regions where temperatures used to be below average during El Niño, you almost never see that anymore,” says Ms. L'Heureux. “You see something that is closer to average, or even above average.”