• Last 12 months were hottest ever recorded: Report


The last 12 months were the hottest ever recorded, with an estimated 7.8 billion people around the world experiencing above-average warmth, according to a new analysis from Climate Central.

The report, published Wednesday, analyzed temperatures between November 2022 and October 2023 and found global warming surpassed 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, setting a new 12-month record.

Over the 12 months, the mean temperatures in 170 countries exceeded 30-year norms, meaning 99 percent of humanity experienced above-average warmth, Climate Central said.

Only Iceland and Lesotho experienced cooler-than-normal temperatures, according to the report.

Researchers found about 5.7 billion people from several countries — including Japan, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Brazil — were exposed to at least 30 days of above-average temperatures during the 12-month span. Using Climate Central’s temperature attribution system, the nonprofit found that these temperatures were made at least three times more likely by the influence of climate change.

Across 200 cities, more than 500 million people experienced streaks of extreme heat, defined by the report as at least five days of daily temperatures in the 99th percentile when compared to the 30-year norms.

Houston experienced the most extreme heat, with 22 consecutive days between July 31 and Aug. 21, while New Orleans and the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Tangerang had 17 straight days of extreme heat.

In Texas, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas were among the cities with the longest extreme heat streaks. In those cities, Climate Central found climate change made this extreme heat at least five times more likely.

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Extreme droughts that have wrecked the lives of millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran since 2020 would not have happened without human-caused global heating, a study has found.

The climate crisis means such long-lasting and severe droughts are no longer rare, the analysis showed. In the Tigris-Euphrates basin, which covers large parts of Syria and Iraq, droughts of this severity happened about once every 250 years before global heating – now they are expected once a decade.

In Iran, extreme drought occurred once every 80 years in the past but now strikes every five years on average in today’s hotter world. Further global heating, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, will make these droughts even more common.

The study also found that existing vulnerability from years of war and political instability had reduced people’s ability to cope with the drought, turning it into a humanitarian disaster.

The researchers said it was vital to plan for more frequent droughts in the future.

“Our study has shown that human-caused climate change is already making life considerably harder for tens of millions of people in west Asia,” said Prof Mohammad Rahimi, at Semnan University, Iran. “And with further warming, Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even harsher places to live.”

Rana El Hajj, at the Red Cross Red Crescent climate centre, said: “While conflict itself increases vulnerability to drought by contributing to land degradation, weakened water management and deteriorating infrastructure, research also shows that climate change, in this region specifically, has acted as a threat multiplier [for conflict].”

Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, UK, said: “Droughts like this will continue to intensify until we stop burning fossil fuels. If the world does not agree to phase out fossil fuels at [UN climate summit] Cop28, everyone loses: more people will suffer from water shortages, more farmers will be displaced and many people will pay more for food at supermarkets.”

The Guardian revealed in 2022 how hundreds of scientific studies now show that human-caused global heating is driving more frequent and deadly disasters across the planet. Leading climate scientists warned in August that the “crazy” extreme weather of 2023 was just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with the even worse impacts to come.

The study was conducted by the World Weather Attribution group. The researchers used weather data and climate models to compare how droughts have changed in the region since global heating has pushed up temperatures by about 1.2C.

Human-induced climate change compounded by socio-economic water stressors increased severity of drought in Syria, Iraq and Iran
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Even the "stable" bits of polar ice are in trouble, new research shows.

The ice shelves extending outward from eight critical glaciers in the northern part of Greenland have lost 35% of their volume and about 33% of their surface area since 1978, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

The melt rate for these shelves is accelerating over the last two decades, suggesting an area thought to be more safe than others is also at risk.

"Given the level of climate warming we have been facing during the last two decades, it is hard to say that this is a surprise," Romain Millan, of Université Grenoble Alpes in France and the new study's lead author, told The Messenger.

The melting Greenland ice sheet contributed 17.3% of the observed sea level rise between 2006 and 2018. The ice shelves float on water and act as buttresses for the glaciers on land; if they melt faster or disappear, the northern glaciers could begin to add as much water to sea level rise as the rest of the ice sheet combined.

Much of the massive island's ice melted at a steady pace during the 1980s and 1990s, but the glaciers in the north began to destabilize after the year 2000. Still, in 2018, the losses to the northern glaciers were much smaller than elsewhere.

"In 2022, we detected for the first time in this region a concerning retreat of the Petermann Glacier, which is one of the largest glaciers on the ice sheet," Millan said. "With this new study, we observe that it actually affects all the major glaciers in Northern Greenland."

The increase in melt rate is due primarily to what's known as basal melting, or melting on the bottom of the ice shelves where they touch the increasingly warm ocean waters around Greenland.

Millan said the processes that are weakening the ice shelves are still relatively poorly understood, and that makes it hard to put an estimate on how this could affect sea levels.

"There are still many uncertainties about this today," he said. "It's one of the major scientific challenges in predicting future sea-level changes."

But what is certain is that this research adds to a pile of evidence suggesting that Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets are in serious jeopardy. A study published in October, for example, showed that the entire Greenland ice sheet, which has the potential to raise global sea levels by more than 20 feet, could begin an inevitable collapse with only a fraction of a degree more warming.

The authors of this new study point out that their study focuses more on the short term and how the ice shelves might affect melting this century, while the October study had a much longer term outlook.

"You could compare what we're doing to meteorology, and what the other paper on Greenland's stability is doing to paleo-climatology," said Eliot Jager, also of Université Grenoble Alpes and a co-author of the new study.

But in both cases, the takeaway is worrying, considering the implications for low-lying coastal areas around the world.

"This widespread weakening of their floating ice shelves, retreat, and dynamic glacier response are alarming signals from these glaciers," Millan said.

"If warming continues, it could significantly increase Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42198-2

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El Niño continues to strengthen in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is likely to give global average temperatures a sizable boost going into next year.

Why it matters: El Niño, a natural climate cycle, affects weather patterns around the world, bringing drought to some countries and flooding to others.

Driving the news: NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued an update this morning that finds El Niño is now in the "strong" category, and there is more than a 55% chance that it will remain this way through the January-through-March period.


  • Compared to last month, NOAA slightly increased the likelihood (to 35%) that this event will become historically strong for the November-through-January period.
  • NOAA also now expects the event to last through the Northern Hemisphere spring.


The big picture: El Niño can also lead to record warm years by giving a natural bump to human-caused warming, like a person jumping up while on a moving escalator.


  • The most recent strong El Niño in 2015-2016 led to a record warmest year, which is on track to be surpassed this year.
  • "El Niño is really going to start to bite next year," said Andrew Pershing, VP for science at Climate Central, during a media call on a climate change attribution study.
  • Pershing and other outside scientists noted that El Niño is only thought to be responsible for about 0.04°C (0.07°F) of the record warmth seen during the during the 12-month period from November 2022 through October 2023, but that this is likely to grow through 2024.


The ongoing event is already reshaping weather patterns in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, bringing drier-than-average conditions to Indonesia and Australia.

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For you climate deniers,…..el nino, la nina and neutral years are all increasing