2023 was officially the planet’s warmest year on record. According to CCCS and WMO calculations, it was 1.48°C warmer than the pre-industrial period, perilously close to the 1.5°C threshold that nations agreed to respect in the 2015 Paris climate accords.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:19 What the data shows is that 2023 is
00:22 the warmest year in
00:24 the historical record that goes back to
00:27 the mid 19th century by quite a long way.
00:30 Warmer temperatures overall obviously give
00:34 rise to longer and more intense heat waves.
00:36 We're seeing that in the statistics.
00:38 Also, it adds to the amount of water vapor in the air.
00:42 When there's rain, it's tending to come more intensely.
00:47 We're seeing increases in intense rainfall pretty much
00:51 anywhere where we've got good enough statistics
00:53 to see the changes over time.
00:56 That has implications for floods.
01:00 We're seeing increases in sea level that has
01:03 implications for coastal flooding, storm surges.
01:07 All of those things are already
01:10 happening and people are noticing.
01:13 There's almost nowhere on Earth that is not seeing
01:18 some shift in the statistics of extreme weather
01:21 that is attributable to the warming that we've seen.
01:25 We expect if things act as they used to act,
01:30 that 2024 will also be possibly another record warm year.
01:38 But as I mentioned,
01:41 things have not been quite as
01:43 expected in the last few months.
01:46 We're very interested to see
01:49 how things are going to develop in 2024.
01:51 That will allow us perhaps to have
01:54 a better idea about what's actually going on.
01:57 [MUSIC]