Climate Change
Analysis: ‘Greater than 99% chance’ 2023 will be hottest year on record
With three months of 2023 still remaining, Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals there is a greater than 99% chance that 2023 will be the hottest year since records began in the mid-1800s, and likely for millennia before as well.
In the “likelihood” language of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this means a new record year is “virtually certain”.
After a cooler start to the year, the past four months have seen truly exceptional global temperatures, surpassing prior monthly records by large margins.
Temperatures during the first few months of 2023 were suppressed by an unusually persistent triple-dip La Niña event, which resulted in lower global temperatures between late 2020 and the start of this year.
Then, starting in March, conditions in the tropical Pacific began to transition rapidly into what is shaping up to be a strong El Niño event. This will likely be weaker than the super El Niño events of 1997-98 and 2015-16, which helped drive record-warm years at the time.
However, global temperatures tend to respond around three months after peak El Niño conditions. The extreme temperatures the world has experienced over the past few months have occurred well before the current El Niño event is expected to peak.
This has led to lots of scientific speculation – though few firm conclusions yet – around the variety of factors that could be contributing to extreme global temperatures along with El Niño and the long-term accumulation of human-caused greenhouse gases.
Hottest year across all records
Based on the temperatures recorded over the first nine months of the year, current El Niño conditions and projected El Niño conditions over the remainder of the year, Carbon Brief can provide an estimate of where each different surface temperature record will likely end up. (See the methodological note at the end for details.)
The figure below shows both the prior record warmest year in each record (coloured square), as well as Carbon Brief’s central estimate of where 2023 will end up (coloured circle) and the 95th percentile confidence interval of that estimate.
(Note that a 2023 projection is not shown for the Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5 dataset given that September data is not yet available.)
Carbon Brief’s central estimate (dot) and 95th percentile range (whiskers) of where 2023 annual temperatures will end up relative to the pre-industrial period for each group. Note that Hadley/UEA is not shown as data was not available through September at time of publication. The Copernicus values shown here use HadCRUT5 data to estimate warming between 1850-99 and 1981-2010. See the methodological note at the end for details. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The figure below shows these estimates in context with their respective records going back to 1970.
Annual global average surface temperatures from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF (lines), along with 2023 estimates (as previous chart). Chart by Carbon Brief.
Based on Carbon Brief’s analysis, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2023 will be the warmest year on record across the NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF datasets.
This is up substantially from the 47%-to-79% likelihood that Carbon Brief estimated at the end of July, reflecting just how high global temperatures have been over the past three months.
| GISTEMP | HadCRUT5 | NOAA | Berkeley | Copernicus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | >99% | TBC | >99% | >99% | >99% |
| 2nd | 0% | TBC | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 3rd | 0% | TBC | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Estimated probabilities of where 2023 will rank compared to previous years for each global temperature dataset. Note that these probabilities do not include measurement uncertainty for each record. Hadley/UEA is not shown as data was not available through September at time of publication. See the methodological note at the end for details.
While all the different temperature datasets project that 2023 will exceed the prior 2016 record by a similar margin, the expected warming in 2023 relative to pre-industrial conditions varies widely across the datasets. The central estimates range from 1.29C (NOAA) and 1.35C (NASA) above pre-industrial (1850-99) levels, to 1.46C (Copernicus) and 1.53C (Berkeley Earth).
(It is important to note that hitting 1.5C in an individual year is not equivalent to a breach of the 1.5C warming limit in the Paris Agreement. The latter refers specifically to long-term human-caused warming and not annual temperatures that include the influence of natural fluctuations in the climate, such as El Niño.)
These differences primarily emerge from variations in how different temperature datasets reconstruct global temperatures in the period prior to 1920 – where global temperature data is more sparse – and which data is used. How gaps between observations are filled has a notable effect on the resulting temperatures. Differences in the ocean dataset used also contribute to variations across groups in estimated warming since pre-industrial times.
The figure below shows Carbon Brief’s estimated 2023 annual temperatures in the Berkeley Earth dataset (red square), as well as the 2023 value to-date (e.g. the average of the first nine months of the year, shown as a yellow diamond).
In this case the annual estimate is slightly higher than the value to-date due to the expectation of continued high global temperatures over the coming three months as El Niño conditions intensify.
Annual temperatures from Berkeley Earth from 1970-2022, along with year-to-date values (yellow diamond) and Carbon Brief’s 2023 projection for the dataset (red square and black whiskers). Chart by Carbon Brief.
New record becomes clear
This latest estimate is notably higher than most scientists expected early in the year. Because the year started out cooler compared to the prior few years, estimates of annual 2023 temperatures early in the year suggested that 2023 would only be one of the top four warmest years on record.
As the figure below shows, this projection started to change with warmer March, April and May temperatures. But it is only in the past two months that it has become unambiguously clear that 2023 will be the warmest year on record.
Similarly, as Carbon Brief reported back in January, most groups (including Carbon Brief) projected that 2023 would end up similar to or slightly warmer than 2022 at the start of the year.
The figure below shows 2023 projections made before any data was available for the year by NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt (purple square), the UK Met Office (dark blue), Berkeley Earth (blue) and Carbon Brief (yellow), compared to the latest estimate using data through September (red).
Annual temperatures from NASA GISTEMP from 1970-2022, along with 2023 estimates published at the start of the year prior to any 2023 data being available (coloured dots and whiskers), as well as the latest estimate using data through September (red dot and whiskers). Chart by Carbon Brief.
No one predicted just how extreme 2023 temperatures would be back at the start of the year (though Dr Schmidt was the closest).
The extreme summer temperatures that have driven such a change in fortunes for 2023 has drawn the attention of many scientists. On top of the long-term warming trend caused by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, there are several other factors at play. In addition to the strong El Niño event, there are likely to be warming contributions from a reduced cooling influence from air pollution, a natural peak in the sun’s intensity and the water vapour injected into the stratosphere by the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption in January last year.
The climate science community is working hard to better understand these different drivers – and what they entail for global warming going forward.
Methodological note
A statistical multivariate regression model was used to estimate the range of likely 2023 annual temperatures for each group that provides a temperature record. This model used the average temperature over the first nine months of the year, the average ENSO 3.4 region value during the first nine months of the year and the average predicted ENSO 3.4 value during the last three months of the year to estimate the annual temperatures.
The model was trained on the relationship between these variables and annual temperatures over the period from 1970-2022 (or 1979-2022 for the Copernicus/ECMWF dataset). The model then uses this fit to predict both the most likely 2023 annual value for each group, as well as the 95% confidence interval. The predicted ENSO 3.4 region values for the last nine months of 2023 are taken from the IRI plume forecast.
The percent likelihood of different year ranks for 2023 is estimated by using the output of the regression model, assuming a normal distribution of results. This allows Carbon Brief to estimate what percent of possible 2023 annual values fall above and below the temperatures of prior years for each group.
The post Analysis: ‘Greater than 99% chance’ 2023 will be hottest year on record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: ‘Greater than 99% chance’ 2023 will be hottest year on record
As part of a series on how key emitters are responding to climate change, Carbon Brief looks at China, which leads the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and coal use – but also on the deployment and manufacture of low-carbon technologies.
China, formally known as the People’s Republic of China, is the world’s second-largest economy and the second most populous country.
The country is home to half of the world’s coal power plants and has the world’s largest capacity of renewables and hydroelectricity, as well as the second-largest for nuclear.
It is also the world’s fifth-largest oil-producer and the second-largest for oil consumption, as well as the single largest contributor to global growth in demand for gas.
In 2006, China overtook the US to become the world’s largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases and its citizens now have carbon footprints well above the global average. However, its cumulative and per-capita emissions remain about half of the US’s today.
Climate change is a priority for the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government. In 2020, China’s leader Xi Jinping pledged to “peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030” and “achieve carbon neutrality before 2060”.
Read the full article here
The post The Carbon Brief Profile: China appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-profile-china/
Cheaper batteries add to the economic case for EVs, even if some U.S. auto dealers are still figuring out how to sell the models.
Optimists about the shift to clean transportation often talk about a double benefit: Electric vehicles have almost zero emissions and soon they also will be less expensive than their gasoline counterparts.
Governments have collectively pledged more than $400 million to establish a loss and damage fund for the victims of climate disaster.
On day one of UN climate talks in Dubai, negotiators rubber-stamped plans to get the fund up and running. The arrangements had been hashed out by a transitional committee over five fraught meetings in the past year.
The Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber hailed the decision as “historic”, with a broad smile, after watching delegates burst into a round of applause.
“This sends a positive signal of momentum to the world and to our work here in Dubai,” he added.
Initial pledges
Following the text’s adoption, a handful of countries promised contributions to the start-up phase of the fund. Germany and Cop28 hosts the United Arab Emirates committed $100 million each, followed by the United Kingdom (£40m or $50.5m), the United States ($17.5m) and Japan ($10m).
EU member states, including Germany, are expected to collectively deliver at least €225m ($245m).
The relatively paltry contribution from the US – the world’s largest economy – attracted immediate criticism. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, called it “embarrassing.
Avinash Persaud, special envoy to Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley and a member of the transitional committee, welcomed the “hard-fought historic agreement”. But he said the pledges were unlikely to represent new and additional resources.
“Because the fund was only approved today, we can’t expect [them] to open up new budgets… so this initial money will be coming from existing budgets,” he told a press huddle, as reported by Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss.
How the fund will work
Significantly more money will be needed to help vulnerable communities benefit from the new mechanism once it gets up and running. The fund is designed to receive contributions “from a wide variety of sources”, including grants and cheap loans from the public and private sectors, and “innovative sources”.
The World Bank is set to initially host the fund for four years, despite strong resistance to its involvement from developing countries.
All developing countries “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of climate change will be eligible to benefit from the mechanism. However, the definition of vulnerability – one of the thorniest issues – is not detailed in the text.
The agreement is an “early win” for the Cop28 hosts, as it sets the start of the conference on a positive collaborative tone, Ana Mulio Alvarez, a loss and damage expert at E3G, told Climate Home.
Speaking at the plenary session, several negotiators underlined the difficult compromises needed to strike a deal.
Compromise deal
Developing countries had initially opposed a role for the World Bank, airing concerns over high costs, slow procedures and the US influence on the institution. But they eventually relented and accepted a compromise, with certain conditions attached to World Bank involvement and an out after four years.
Rich nations attempted to broaden the pool of donors expected to contribute, but made limited headway. The text “urges” developed countries to provide financial resources to the fund, while other nations are only “encouraged” to do so “on a voluntary basis”.
The EU climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, has said China and petrostates like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar should pay into the fund. Others want to broaden the donor base to countries with high-emitting economies categorised by the UN as developing nations like South Korea and Russia.
“The UAE’s contribution of $100 million is welcome, both for its solid cash and for the pressure it puts on the world’s biggest polluters to also step up and recognise their responsibility for decades of pollution,” said Teresa Anderson, climate justice campaigner with ActionAid International.
“Innovative sources” of finance could mean carbon taxes on international aviation or shipping, financial transactions or fossil fuels. France and Kenya are set to launch a coalition at Cop28 to develop these options.
Civil society experts have said much more work lies ahead and, ultimately, the success of the fund will depend on how much money it is equipped with.
The cost of loss and damage for developing countries is projected to reach $400 billion per year by 2030.
“Although rules have been agreed regarding how the fund will operate there are no hard deadlines, no targets and countries are not obligated to pay into it,” said Adow. “The most pressing issue now is to get money flowing into the fund and to the people that need it.”
The post Countries pledge $400m to set up loss and damage fund appeared first on Climate Home News.
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