2024 begins with multiple heat records around the world

The exceptional heat that enveloped the planet last summer will continue strongly in 2024:

Last January was the warmest month ever measured, the European Union’s climate observatory announced Thursday.

It was also the warmest January on record in the oceans, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate change service.

Sea surface temperatures were only slightly lower than in August 2023, the warmest month on record for the oceans.

And the sea temperature continued to rise even in the first days of February, surpassing the daily records of last August.

The oceans absorb Most of the extra heat that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap near Earth’s surface makes them a reliable indicator of how much and how fast we are warming the planet.

Warmer oceans provide more fuel hurricanes and river atmospheric stormsand can alter marine life.

With January there are now eight consecutive months in which average air temperatures, both on the continents and in the seas, have exceeded all previous records for that period of the year.

In total, 2023 was Earth’s warmest year in more than a century and a half.

The main cause of this warming is no mystery to scientists:

The use of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities have caused temperatures to rise steadily for more than a century.

The current El Niño weather cycle is also allowing for its release more ocean heat in the atmosphere.

However, exactly why the Earth has been so hot for so long in recent months remains a matter of debate among researchers, who are waiting to receive more data to see whether other, less predictable and perhaps less understood data might also act on the margins.

“Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to stop the planet’s temperature from rising,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

According to Copernicus data, January temperatures were well above average in eastern Canada, northwest Africa, the Middle East and central Asia, although much of the interior United States was colder than usual. Some areas of South America have been hotter and drier than normal, contributing to the recent forest fires that devastated central Chile.

The intensity of recent underwater heat waves led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to add additional figures in December three new levels to its ocean thermal warning system to indicate where corals might bleach or die.

An El Niño pattern like the one currently observed in the Pacific is associated with warmer years for the planet, as well as a range of effects on precipitation and temperatures in specific regions.

But as humans warm the planet, the effects meteorologists could confidently expect El Niño to have on local temperatures They are no longer so predictablesaid Michelle L’Heureux, a NOAA scientist who studies El Niño and its opposite phase, La Niña.

“In regions that previously tended to have lower-than-average temperatures during El Niño, you almost don’t see these temperatures anymore,” L’Heureux said.

“You see something that is closer to average, or even still above average.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company