Unprecedented global temperatures from June onwards led 2023 to become the hottest year on record – overtaking by a large margin 2016, the previous warmest year, according to new data from Copernicus.
Copernicus is a component of the European Union’s space programme, with funding by the EU, and is its flagship earth observation programme.
The 2023 Global Climate Highlights report released by Copernicus today (Tuesday, January 9) presents a summary of last year’s most relevant climate extremes and the main drivers behind them, such as greenhouse gas concentrations, El Niño and other natural variations.
The analysis shows that 2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016.
It was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level.
Close to 50% of days were more than 1.5°C warmer then the 1850-1900 level, with July and August recorded as the warmest two months on record.
A large number of extreme events were recorded across the globe, including heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires. Estimated global wildfire carbon emissions in 2023 increased by 30%.
Copernicus stated that the earliest signs of how “unusual” 2023 was to become began to emerge in early June, when temperature anomalies relative to 1850-1900 pre-industrial level reached 1.5°C for several days in a row.
Head of earth observation at the directorate general for defence industry and space, European Commission, Mauro Facchini said:
“We knew thanks to the work of the Copernicus programme throughout 2023 that we would not receive good news today. But the annual data presented here provides yet more evidence of the increasing impacts of climate change.
“The European Union, in line with the best available science, has agreed on an emission reduction of 55% by 2030 – now just 6 years away. The challenge is clear.”
Europe
2023 was the second-warmest year for Europe, 0.17°C cooler than 2020, which remains the warmest year.
Temperatures in Europe were above average for 11 months during 2023, with September recorded as the warmest September on record.
European autumn (September-November) had an average temperature of 10.96°C, which is 1.43°C above average. This made autumn the second-warmest on record, just 0.03°C cooler than autumn 2020.
The average temperature for the European summer (June-August) was 19.63°C; at 0.83°C above average, which was the fifth-warmest on record.
Deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess said: “Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, it is also the first year with all days over 1°C warmer than the pre-industrial period.
“Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”