The heat continues

We may not have felt it here in the Philippines, but the Earth was at its hottest in recorded history last July and August. The typhoons and monsoon rains in the last two months may have caused a lot of damage in agriculture and infrastructure, but it shielded us from the extreme heat that the rest of the world experienced.

July 2023 was officially declared as the warmest month on record. According to U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the average global surface temperature in July was 1.12 °C above average, ranking it as the warmest July in the agency’s 174-year record.

The heat persisted. Last August was also the hottest on record and the second hottest ever month after July 2023, according to the European Union Funded- Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) ERA 5 dataset. August, as a whole, is estimated to have been around 1.5°C warmer than the preindustrial average for 1850-1900, according to the C3S monthly climate bulletin.

August also saw the highest global monthly average sea surface temperatures on record across all months, at 20.98°C. Temperatures exceeded the previous record (March 2016) every single day in August. The year so far (January to August) is the second warmest on record behind 2016, when there was a powerful warming El Niño event.

Note that the anomaly of 1.5°C reached in August is the limit set by climate experts. The Paris Agreement which entered into force on November 04, 2016 aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. According to an IPCC report (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/), risks to natural and human systems are expected to be lower at 1.5°C than at 2°C of global warming.

So how close are we to the 1.5°C limit? According to an IPCC Special Report (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/SPM_version_report_LR.pdf), human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.

The IPCC said that many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion, such as continued sea level rise, are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.

Something can still be done. Strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases while achieving sustainable development and poverty eradication is needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. While benefits for air quality would come quickly, it could take 20-30 years to see global temperatures stabilize, according to the IPCC Working Group I report, ‘Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis’.