Hottest year in Ireland and rest of world could be surpassed again as El Nino peaks
Last year broke the record for the hottest year on record by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilisation developed, according to leading climate scientists.
2023 shattered the previous global temperature record by almost two-tenths of a degree – the largest jump ever observed. The planet was 1.48 degrees hotter in 2023 compared with the period before mass burning of fossil fuels and other polluting activities ignited the climate crisis, Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) said on Tuesday.
The figure is very close to the critical 1.5-degree temperature target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, though the global average temperature would need to be consistently above 1.5 degrees for the target to be considered broken.
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