2023 is expected to be one of the warmest years on record for the planet, according to the UK Meteorological Office’s annual worldwide projection for the upcoming year.
According to a press release from the Met Office, the average global temperature is expected to be between 1.08 and 1.32 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average. This will mark the tenth year in a row that the Earth’s average temperature has risen to at least one degree Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels.
Dr. Nick Dunstone, the Met Office’s chief climate scientist, said that over the past three years, La Ni a has caused sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific to be lower than average, which has led to an overall cooling of the planet.
However, that Is About to Alter.
Our climate model predicts that the three years of successive La Ni conditions will stop the next year and that some areas of the tropical Pacific will return to relatively warmer conditions. According to Dunstone, who was quoted in the news release, this shift will probably cause the global temperature to rise in 2023 relative to 2022.
Professor Adam Scaife, Head of Long-Range Prediction at the Met Office, claims that 2016 was the warmest year on record going back to 1850.
Warmer seas in some areas of the tropical Pacific contributed to an El Ni year in 2016, which raised the average global temperature. Without an El Ni o to raise global temperatures, 2023 might not set any records, but given that greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise globally, Scaife predicted in the press release that the following year will likely be another noteworthy one in the series.
Unexpected occurrences like large-scale volcanic eruptions that would temporarily chill the environment are not taken into account by the Met Office prediction.
Temperatures in various parts of the world can vary dramatically from the worldwide average, according to Dr. Doug Smith, one of the Met Office’s top specialists in climate prediction.
The significant temperature difference around the world is hidden by the fact that the global average temperature has been at or above 1C for the past ten years. According to Smith, certain places, like the Arctic, have warmed by several degrees since the beginning of the industrial age.
The average worldwide temperature was predicted by the Met Office to rise by 0.97 to 1.21 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of last year. The global average is currently 1.16 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial norm, according to data collected from January through October of this year.
There is no question that global temperatures are rising, and if humans want to prevent the most severe effects of climate change, we must act rapidly to keep the average world temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Richard Allant, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, told BBC News that until policies are in place to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, warming will continue to accelerate over the next year and into the future. This will also result in more severe wet, dry, and hot extremes.
