With Temps in 2023, 'People Know That Things Are Weird'

Don't feel like you've accomplished much over the last year? Check this off your list: "You've just lived through Earth's hottest 12 months on record." Not that anyone would want to put that on a T-shirt, but that's how the Washington Post describes the latest findings by scientists at the nonprofit Climate Central, who also say the past year may have been the hottest in 125,000 years. What that means, the Post notes, is that "nearly 3 in 4 people experienced more than a month's worth of heat so extreme, it would have been unusual in the past, but became at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change."

From November of last year to this past October, more than 7 billion people, or about 90% of us on Earth, experienced at least 10 days of those super-high temperatures, the peer-reviewed report found, per the AP. And about 25% of people on the planet lived through five-day heat waves that were at least twice as likely because of climate change, reports NBC News. The researchers' analysis also indicates that Earth is inching ever closer to a worrisome benchmark—1.5 degrees Celsius over normal preindustrial temps, the limit set by the Paris Agreement—with data showing that average global temperatures this year have hovered 1.3 C to 1.4 C over 19th-century levels. Scientists say that hitting that benchmark could "irreversibly damage, if not destroy, entire ecosystems," per the Post.

"I think the thing that really came screaming out of the data this year was nobody is safe," says Climate Central scientist Andrew Pershing, pointing out how the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to this frogs-in-boiling-water phenomenon, per the AP. "People know that things are weird, but they don't ... necessarily know why it's weird. They don't connect back to the fact that we're still burning coal, oil, and natural gas." NBC notes that the El Niño climate pattern has also been a contributing factor. A Columbia University scientist tells the news agency that no one should be thrown by the report's findings at this point. "It's like being on an escalator and being surprised that you're going up," Jason Smerdon says. "We know that things are getting warmer, this has been predicted for decades." More here on particularly affected areas. (More global warming stories.)