that humanity has never experienced temperatures As high as those recorded between November 2022 and October 2023, 1.3 degrees above normal and 125,000 year highAccording to a report published this Thursday by Climate Central (CC).
Data collected by the American scientific organization from 175 countries shows that 99% of the planet’s population, approximately 7.8 billion people, is exposed to above-normal temperatures. Additionally, 5.7 billion people were exposed to abnormally high temperatures for at least 30 days.
“These temperatures are the hottest humans have experienced since we decided to build cities and live together in large groups,” Andrew Pershing, vice president of Climate Central and one of the study’s authors, said at a press conference.
“These are the hottest temperatures humans have experienced since we decided to build cities and live together in large groups.”
According to Pershing, who warned that 2023 data is “fully consistent with the long-term trend,” the reason for this record increase in temperatures is carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
Climate Center developed the so-called Climate Change Index (CSI) or Climate Change Index, A tool that represents the extent to which climate change is affecting climate and temperature patterns.
One month of hell
The CC determined that the climate crisis caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has multiplied by three the probability that these unusual temperatures will occur between November 2022 and October 2023; this represents the third level of the CSI scale.
In India, 1.2 billion people, or 86% of the population, were exposed to CSI level three fever for 30 days or more. In China, this figure was 513 million people, or 35% of the population. 88 million in the United States, or 26% of the total population.
However, in countries such as Spain, Brazil, Mexico, France, the United Kingdom, Iran, Egypt, the Philippines, Japan, the Caribbean and Central America, almost the entire population was exposed to the same level of temperatures. three CSIs for at least a month.
Data shows that among the world’s major cities, conditions in Houston (USA) were the worst, with 22 consecutive days (between July 31 and August 21) of extreme heat. In the cases of New Orleans (USA) and Jakarta and Tangerang (Indonesia), this period was 17 consecutive days.
Pershing warned The situation will definitely worsen in 2024, when the effects of La Niña will completely disappear and those of El Niño are becoming more tangible.
“El Niño will really start to hit next year, and that will cause even more warming in 2024,” he said.
Heat waves, heavy rains and droughts
Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London, who participated in the writing of the study, made the following warning regarding warming: The change in the composition of the atmosphere also causes heavy rainfall and also droughts in different parts of the planet.
“With warming, the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. And moisture must escape from the atmosphere. So We expect heavy rains to increase“Otto explained.
The scientist added that the climate crisis has increased the likelihood of downpours by 80 times, which Nigeria, Algeria and other neighboring countries have experienced in the last 12 months.
In response to Efe’s question, Pershing stated that some of the places where extreme heat waves have been experienced in the last 12 months correspond to the regions around the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, and said, “They are bodies of water that are really exposed to extraordinary temperatures.”
But he warned that the regions will change each year and hotspots will be concentrated in South America, the Caribbean and Africa.
“Africa is experiencing numerous extreme heatwaves, but no one talks about them, they are not really recorded and we have no reports of their effects.”
In this sense, Otto warned that Africa was suffering from “an enormous number of extreme heat waves.”
“But no one talks about them, they’re not really recorded and we don’t actually have any reports of their impact. There are very few areas in Africa where heat deaths are tracked. If you want to know where the hotspots of heatwaves are, it’s Africa, but if you read the newspapers it doesn’t look like it,” he said. concluded the scientist.
Groundwork: https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/earths-hottest-12-month-streak-2023
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