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
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.
It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.
The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.
The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”.
The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.
One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.
The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.
Measuring climate actions
The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change.
Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change.
In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.
To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:
| Experiment | What they did |
| Survey one | Participants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity. |
| Survey two | Participants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint. |
| Survey three | Participants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people. |
| Surveys four and five | Participants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. |
The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.
The perception gap
The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours.
For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.
Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%.
The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors.
The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots).
They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.
In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.
The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations.
For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.
The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.
Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate.
In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group.
However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.
Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”.
However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action.
‘Pluralistic ignorance’
Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.
For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says.
However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors.
Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex.
It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.
“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds.
The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.
Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”.
However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life.
As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.
‘Targeted’ communication strategies
The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.
They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions.
The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support.
They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.
Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z
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The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
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