It's never been so hot before. Scientists' fears have been confirmed

A group of scientists led by Jan Esper, a climatologist from the German Johan Gutenberg University, confirmed that Summer 2023 was the hottest in at least 2,000 years. This confirmed what experts had previously feared based on partial data.

Summer 2023 will be the warmest in 2000 years

Climatologists conducted their analysis by comparing data collected over the past year with historical temperatures obtained based on the growth of tree rings. In this way, it was possible to meaningfully examine temperatures over the last 2,000 years or so. In this way it was possible to establish that the average temperature in the summer of 2023 increased by 2.07 °C compared to pre-industrial times.

This in itself is significant because it suggests that the starting temperature adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement was already too high, and the real scale of climate change is much more serious than we assumed.

Climate change is here – what's next?

One of the reasons why 2023 was a record warm year is El Niño, a regularly occurring natural ocean phenomenon that influences the climate around the world. The main factor though is record greenhouse gas emissions, for which we as humanity are responsible, mainly by burning gigantic amounts of coal.

Climate change poses a serious threat. For example, in Canada, a record warm summer led to extremely intense forest fires, which consumed the area of ​​the row 45 million hectares. As temperatures rise, such phenomena will become more and more common, and the effects of global warming will have a negative impact on the global economy.

As Jan Esper himself points out, the main conclusion from the newly published data should be one: that we need to do as much as we can, as quickly as we can.