(CN) — Last month was the warmest November ever recorded globally, making it certain 2023 will be the hottest year ever measured, the European Union's climate agency said Wednesday.
This announcement became the latest in a string of bleak reports in recent days about worsening human-caused climate change. The reports add even more urgency to an annual United Nations climate change summit taking place in Dubai.
Major disagreements among world leaders over whether to call for a phase out of fossil fuels has overshadowed the climate summit, known as COP28. Scientists say drastic reductions in carbon emissions must take place in the near future to prevent catastrophic warming.
A combative mood has settled over the summit in the United Arab Emirates after Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, an Emirati minister overseeing the conference who also heads the UAE national oil company ADNOC, came under fire over a leaked video in which he questioned whether the phase out of fossil fuels will achieve climate goals.
The summit is taking place at the end of a record-breaking year.
Globally, the average surface air temperature in November was 14.22 degrees Celsius (57.69 degrees Fahrenheit), or 0.85 C (1.53 F) above average, according to a report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The EU agency uses a baseline between 1991-2020 to calculate average temperatures. Compared to an average November in the pre-industrial era, the agency estimated this November was 1.75 C (3.15 F) warmer than what it was like in the 19th century.
This November came in 0.32 C (0.57 F) warmer than the previous warmest November, measured in 2020, the agency said.
Since an El Niño weather pattern emerged early this year, the world has seen a string of record-setting warm months. El Niños typically bring warmer and more unpredictable weather, including destructive storms, drought, wildfires and heat waves. These weather cycles can last several years.
Between January and November, the global mean temperature this year was 0.13 C (0.23 F) higher than 2016, the warmest year on record, Copernicus said.
With this autumn the warmest ever recorded in the boreal regions, Copernicus scientists said they were confident this will be the hottest year on record.
“2023 has now had six record-breaking months and two record-breaking seasons,” said Samantha Burgess, the Copernicus deputy director. “2023 is the warmest year in recorded history.”
Carlo Buontempo, the Copernicus director, said global temperatures will go up “as long as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising.”
“The temperature will keep rising and so will the impacts of heat waves and droughts,” he said. “Reaching net zero as soon as possible is an effective way to manage our climate risks.”
The Copernicus update is among several distressing reports that have been released since the COP28 opened last week.
This week, the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of climate scientists, said carbon dioxide pollution rose by 1.1% this year as emissions surged in China and India. They are the world's first and third biggest emitters.
The scientists said there is a 50% chance that within seven years it will no longer be possible to keep temperatures from exceeding those in the pre-industrial era by 1.5 C (2.7 F) , a goal set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.
“The impacts of climate change are evident all around us, but action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels remains painfully slow,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, a University of Exeter climate scientist who led the study. “It now looks inevitable we will overshoot the 1.5 C target of the Paris Agreement, and leaders meeting at COP28 will have to agree rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions even to keep the 2 C target alive.”
On Wednesday, a group of international scientists led by the University of Exeter warned that global warming may have already led the planet and humanity to cross dangerous tipping points. The warning came in the Global Tipping Points Report, which was launched at COP28.
“Harmful tipping points in the natural world pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity,” the report said. “Their triggering will severely damage our planet’s life-support systems and threaten the stability of our societies.”
The tipping points at risk include the collapse of massive ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic.
The report's scientists said that when a climatic system reaches a tipping point, it may irreversibly change the way the planet works.
Zoë Thomas, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Southampton, said scientists increasingly are concerned about planetary tipping points.
“Increasingly studies show that the interactions of fast and slow drivers mean it is difficult to predict precisely when large global systems such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, or the Amazon Rainforest will likely tip,” she said in a comment. “But crucially they do show that on current trajectories it is (a) inevitable, and (b) may happen sooner than we think.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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