Global heating 2023

It’s difficult to distill the records that are falling annually, monthly, and daily in 2023, and impossible to comprehend the horror behind the numbers. Average global warming for 2023 has been announced as 1.4°C, up from 1.2°C in 2022. We are witnessing accelerated warming on the cusp of a Southern El Nino Summer.

Measures

• Earth energy imbalance (solar energy in / Earth energy out) is four times higher (and accelerating) than in 2023 than in 2001-2.
  
• Global surface air temp at record high all but three days from 4 June through 23 November. 17 November was the first day that the global temperature exceeded 2°C above pre-industrial levels, reaching 2.07°C above the 1850-1900 average baseline and the provisional value for 18 November is 2.06°C (as shown in the chart below).
  
• Sea surface temperature has been at a record high every day since 13 March and is now 0.8°C higher than the 1982-2011 baseline.
  
• Global sea ice extent was at a record low every day between 22 May and 27 Oct.
  

Impacts

Just some of the impacts include:

• Mediterranean ‘Storm’ Daniel (Sept 4-12). In Libya the destruction includes over 4,333 dead and between 10,000 to 100,000 people missing. While in Greece 17 were killed and around one third of Greece’s prime agricultural land flooded, with a recorded maximum of 1,092mm.
• Otis, a rapidly intensifying storm that formed a category Cat 5 hurricane, caused 49 fatalities and over $11bn (US) in damage in Acapulco, Mexico.
• 2023 Canadian Wildfires burned ~ 18 million hectares (1.8% total land area, 3.7% Canada’s Boreal forest; more than 4 times the extent burned in any previous year in the satellite record.