1.48 degrees Celsius
In 2023, the Earth’s average temperature was 1.48°C higher than in the pre-industrial era, the years 1850-1900, according to Copernicus. The rise has been virtually constant since 1850. The 2023 record eclipses that of 2016, which was 1.31°C. That’s a jump of 0.17 degrees, or 13%.
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In 2023, the threshold of 1.5°C above the average temperature of the pre-industrial era has practically been reached.
100,000 years
PHOTO GUILLERMO SALGADO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
A man helps fight a forest fire in El Patagual, Chile, February 2023.
If the analysis is limited to the period 1850-2023, we should not believe that it was warmer before. According to Carlo Buontempo, this threshold is undoubtedly the highest in the last 100,000 years. “There were simply no cities, no books, no agriculture or domestic animals on this planet the last time the temperature was this high,” he says. Analysis of tree rings and ice cores tends to confirm this hypothesis, notes Samantha Burgess, also from Copernicus.
On the edge of the threshold limit
PHOTO CHALINEE THIRASUPA, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Pedestrians hide from the sun in Bangkok, where the mercury exceeded 40°C in April 2023.
Why is this 1.48°C so important? This is because it corresponds, to within 0.02 degrees, to the threshold limit for temperature increase compared to that of the pre-industrial era that was set by the participants of COP21 in Paris in 2016. The objective was then to keep “the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to continue efforts “to limit the increase in temperature to no more than 1.5°C”. above pre-industrial levels.
In three decades
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Children cool off in the water fountains on the Place des Arts Esplanade, in July 2023.
Over a much shorter period, the observation of rising temperatures is more obvious. According to Copernicus, the Earth’s temperature in 2023 was 0.60 degrees warmer compared to the average for the period 1991-2020. In other words, 40% of the 1.48 degree rise recorded since 1850 has occurred in the last 30 years.
Anomalies everywhere
PHOTO CLAUDIA MORALES, REUTERS ARCHIVES
A man stands in a dry part of Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, in October 2023. South America was hit by severe droughts last year.
The average temperature of the Earth in 2023 was 14.98°C. We will have seen the effects all year round with a host of extreme climatic phenomena: monster forest fires, extreme droughts, floods, etc.
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From Canada to Antarctica, from Siberia to the whole of Europe and all the oceans, temperature anomalies have been recorded everywhere on the planet in 2023. In Canada, the maximum temperature of 2023, i.e. 42 .2°C, was recorded on August 15 in Lytton, British Columbia.
With Agence France-Presse and The New York Times