2023 Set To Be Hottest Year On Record, Say Scientists

Our planet is set to experience its hottest year after October smashed records, just before a climate summit scheduled to take place this month. The scientists of Copernicus European Earth observation agency found last month was the hottest on record globally, with temperatures 0.8 degrees Celsius above the long-term average for the month, according to a report in Financial Times (FT). The monthly temperature was more than double the September rise, and the highest on record, the outlet further said in its report.

"The exceptional October followed four months of global temperature records being obliterated," said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

Experts voiced concern over the succession of record-breaking temperature.

"Laid out so starkly, the 2023 numbers on air temperatures, sea temperatures, sea ice and the rest look like something out of a Hollywood movie," David Reay, a climate scientist at Edinburgh university, told FT.

"If our current global efforts to tackle climate change were a film it would be called Hot Mess," Mr Reay added.

The high temperature is a result of burning of fossil fuels, which pumped in heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

One of the landmark deals reached at the Paris summit eight years ago made world leader promise to stop the planet heating by 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of century. But according to The Guardian, current policies are set to heat it by about 2.4 degrees Celsius.

"The sizzling October 2023 is another unfortunate example that shows how temperature records are getting shattered by a humongous margin. Global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions and El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean are hitting the planet really hard," Akshay Deoras, a meteorology research scientist at the University of Reading, told the outlet.

Copernicus scientists also found that the average global mean temperature between January and October this year was the highest on record - 0.1 degrees Celsius sabove the 10-month average of current record holder 2016.

The Copernicus report is expected to be a key flashpoint when world leaders meet at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai this month. The conference will begin on November 30 and continue till December 12.