UN says 2023 will be hottest year on record

This year will be both earth’s warmest on record and the conclusion of the warmest nine-year period on record, the United Nations’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) projected Thursday.

The past year has already set a number of temperature records, and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service earlier said 2023 was on track to be the warmest known year. Despite the remaining time in the year, the WMO said in a statement that 2023’s temperatures have already outflanked the previous warmest years, 2016 and 2020, to the point that it is almost certain to break the record.

WMO data through the end of October indicates that 2023 was approximately 1.4 degrees Celsius hotter than the preindustrial 1850-1900 period. In addition to the record heat in 2023, the WMO projected that the nine years from 2015-23 were the warmest such period on record. The El Niño event that first became apparent this past spring contributed to temperatures this year and is likely to have impacts that linger into 2024.

The WMO also found that sea levels rose from 2013 to 2022 at more than double the rate of 1993-2002, the first decade covered by satellite records. 

“These are more than just statistics. We risk losing the race to save our glaciers and to rein in sea level rise,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “We cannot return to the climate of the 20th century, but we must act now to limit the risks of an increasingly inhospitable climate in this and the coming centuries.” 

The report comes at the beginning of the COP28 international climate summit in Dubai, where industrialized nations have reportedly reached an agreement on the logistics of a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable nations after agreeing to create such a fund last year. Climate activists have expressed hope for the summit but criticized the choice of a major oil producer as host nation.