2023 is smashing global heat records. Chinese experts are even more worried about 2024
- A rising global average surface temperature will mean more stifling hot days, and more frequent extreme weather, researchers say
- New findings add fresh urgency to avoid tipping point that makes forecasting weather and climate patterns much more complex
Scientists at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou have warned that drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid reaching a climate tipping point, when the systems that balance and circulate energy and heat on Earth collapse, upending existing climate patterns.
The researchers based their findings on the China global Merged Surface Temperature data set, which they developed using global land surface air temperature data from 1850 to 2023. The data set integrated new findings from several countries and regions over the past decade.
02:32
July 2023 expected to be world’s hottest month in recorded history
The data set showed the global average surface temperature in the first half of this year reached its third warmest since records began, behind only 2016 and 2020.
In July, the Earth’s hottest month on record, United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres said “the era of global boiling has arrived”, signalling that the global warming stage was ending.
In the same month, sea ice coverage shrank to a record low, as the global average sea surface temperature reached a record high at 0.51 degrees Celsius (1 Fahrenheit) above the 1991 to 2020 average, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
The Sun Yat-sen University team predicted that if the temperature in the last five months of 2023 nears the average level of the past five years, the annual average surface temperature will be about 1.26 degrees Celsius higher than during the pre-industrial period.
Should that happen, it would break a record set in 2016 that was 1.25 degrees higher than the period from 1850 to 1900, according to the study.
“‘The era of global boiling’ means that the Earth’s temperature has risen into its upper limit range,” said lead researcher Li Qingxiang, a professor at the school of atmospheric sciences at Sun Yat-sen University.
He said in the future, El Nino events were expected to push temperatures higher, but the following La Ninas might not significantly bring down the overall temperatures, as they had in the past.
“Global warming is a serious threat that is very evident with predictions of record-breaking temperatures in 2023 and 2024, as well as the heat records set in the past three years,” he said.
Li said the higher-for-longer temperatures would mean more uncomfortably hot days, especially in lower latitudes, and more frequent and stronger extreme weather events in the near future, including typhoons, rainfall, heatwaves and droughts.
“The acceleration of global warming increases the probability of various extreme climate events and disasters,” the scientists said in the study.
03:27
Why are heatwaves and flash floods sweeping the northern hemisphere?
“Oceans are a key heat energy storage source for the planet, but they are reaching their storage capacity and El Nino events are encouraging heat to be released, melting sea ice in the Arctic.”
Li said that if a tipping point was crossed and the ocean’s circulation patterns bringing heat energy to cooler higher latitudes were interrupted, the heat transfer exchange between the north and the south would be cut off.
“A new balancing system might emerge in the warmer, lower latitudes, but it is fraught with uncertainty and we would not know where the transfer would occur.”
