2023 was the hottest year on record—and even hotter than expected

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https://www.science.org/content/article/even-warmer-expected-2023-was-hottest-year-record

By PAUL VOOSEN, Science. 

Excerpt: ...2023 was the hottest year in human history. Average surface temperatures rose nearly 0.2°C above the previous record, set in 2016, to 1.48°C over preindustrial levels, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported today. ...Humanity’s unabated burning of fossil fuels is the dominant driver of the long-term trend, but it is insufficient to explain 2023’s sudden spike, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University. ...One exacerbating factor was the end of a La Niña climate pattern, which from 2020 to 2022 stirred up an increased amount of deep cold water in the eastern Pacific Ocean that absorbed heat and suppressed global temperatures. In 2023, the pattern flipped into an El Niño event, which blanketed the equatorial Pacific with warm waters and began to boost global temperatures. ...But the flip is not enough to explain 2023’s record, Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in a blog post last week. ...Perhaps the best explanation for the extra warming is the continued drop in light-blocking pollution as society shifts to cleaner sources of energy, says Tianle Yuan, an atmospheric physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2022, satellites began to detect this decrease from space. In 2020, new regulations from the International Maritime Organization added to the effect when ships began to cut sulfur pollution—and inadvertently curbed the light-reflecting clouds that the sulfur particles help create. ...Regardless, the long-term warming pattern is certain to continue, as it has for decades—until fossil fuel burning ends.... 

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