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Last summer’s blazing hot temperatures weren’t just the hottest of our lifetimes; they were the tops for two millennia, according to a study.
In the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures were 3.72 degrees above normal, the highest since 1900, when recordkeeping began, and also topped average temperatures calculated by scientists dating back to year 1, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“This conclusion came without surprise as multiple regional heatwaves, exceeding any daily or weekly instrumental measurements, were reported throughout the boreal summer of 2023,” researchers Jan Esper, Max Torbenson and Ulf Büntgen wrote for the journal Nature.
Coming in a distant second place was the year 246, which was 2.14 degrees cooler than 2023.
“Although 2023 is consistent with a greenhouse gases-induced warming trend that is amplified by an unfolding El Niño event, this extreme emphasizes the urgency to implement international agreements for carbon emission reduction,” the researchers wrote.
Climate scientists told the Times that they are “very worried and concerned and increasingly alarmed by what is going on and what the data is showing,” as said by Daniel Swain of UCLA.
Esper, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University, told the Times that the longer humanity waits to reverse this trend, the worse things will get, adding that global warming is “one of the biggest threats out there.”
“It’s just so obvious: We should do as much as possible, as soon as possible,” he said.