Syed Munir Khasru

Opinion | 2023 was the hottest in 125,000 years. But it won’t be the last

Temperatures could continue to set records for years to come as the greenhouse effect is intensified by a robust El Niño releasing heat from the Pacific Ocean

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A field of burnt sunflowers is seen on August 22, close to Puy Saint Martin village, in southeastern France, where temperature hit 43 degrees Celsius. Photo: AFP

Syed Munir Khasru

Published: 5:30am, 11 Jan 2024Updated: 6:59am, 11 Jan 2024

Last year was humanity’s hottest in at least 125,000 years. However, with warming trends predicted, it may turn out to be merely an average year rather than an anomaly.

Last November, with the Cop28 UN climate summit commencing, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) affirmed what already seemed inevitable – that 2023 would be the hottest year in human history. It is noteworthy that similar declarations – whether for the hottest year, years or decade – are made just about every year around the time of the conference of parties.

Last May, the WMO also warned that it expected global temperatures to reach record levels in the next five years. This surge is attributed to heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño weather pattern.

For scientists at Nasa, the summer of 2023 marked Earth’s highest temperatures since global records began in 1880. The combined temperatures for June, July and August were 0.23 degrees Celsius higher than for any other summer recorded by the US space agency.

Last year, intense heatwaves affected many parts of the world, from the United States across South America, to countries in Europe and Asia, with devastating wildfires in Canada and Hawaii. Extreme weather was also seen in Italy, Greece and across central Europe, where severe rainfall caused floods.

The speed of global warming over the past 50 years has exceeded anything observed over the past 2,000 years, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Such concerning patterns suggest we are unlikely to look back on 2023 as the year that rising temperatures peaked. And conditions are projected to deteriorate.