If 2023 has set a new record for average temperature over an entire year, it also marks a clear break with the past by having beaten dozens of global daily benchmarks, according to data from the European Copernicus observatory, analyzed by AFP.
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These data, published Tuesday, relate to the average temperature in the world, each day from January 1, 1940 to December 31, 2023.
Of the nearly 30,700 days since 1940, the 46 hottest days were measured in 2023, in July and August, during the northern hemisphere summer.
The record for the hottest day now belongs to July 6, 2023, with a global average temperature of 17.08°C. The previous daily record, established on August 14, 2016 with 16.79°C, is not only erased but returned to 47th place.
November 17 and 18 also entered a previously unknown zone, with for the first time in history daily measurements 2°C warmer than the averages for the same day in the pre-industrial era (1850-1900 ), the reference period used by the UN.
Also unprecedented, every day of the year in 2023 was at least 1°C warmer than pre-industrial normals.
For almost half the year (173 days), this anomaly exceeded the threshold of +1.5°C, which has become the emblematic objective of the Paris agreement.
This represents 47.4% of the days of the year, very far from past observations: in 2016, the previous record year, only 77 days (21% of the year) had surpassed this level, crossed for the first time in 2015.
These data do not mean that the objective of the Paris agreement (“continue efforts to limit the rise in temperatures to +1.5°C”) has been officially exceeded, specifies the Copernicus observatory, because it refers to climatic averages measured over much longer periods of “at least 20 years”.
However, daily anomalies show that the weather experienced by the Earth before 1900 is becoming more and more distant.
Thus, the month of October 2023, in the middle of autumn in the northern hemisphere, was as hot as the average August in pre-industrial times (15.3°C), before the effect of combustion. fossil fuels on the climate.
The last time Earth experienced a day less than 0.5°C warmer than the 1850-1900 average for the same day was June 24, 2008.
And to find a day colder than its 1850-1900 average, you have to go back to… October 8, 1992, more than 31 years ago.