NASA announced the summer of 2023 was Earth’s hottest since global records began in 1880. The scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York show the trend of the months of June, July and August. The three months combined were 0.23 degrees Celsius °C (0.41 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record, and 1.2 °C (2.1 degrees F) warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. August alone was 1.2 °C (2.2 F) warmer than the average. June through August is considered meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
This exceptional heat swept across much of the world, caused deadly wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, and searing heat waves in South America, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., while likely contributing to severe rainfall in Italy, Greece, and Central Europe.
NASA assembles its temperature record, known as GISTEMP, from surface air temperature data acquired by tens of thousands of meteorological stations, as well as sea surface temperature data. This raw data is analyzed using methods that account for the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and for urban heating effects that could skew the calculations.
The analysis calculates temperature anomalies. A temperature anomaly shows how far the temperature has departed from the 1951 to 1980 base average.
Exceptionally high sea surface temperatures were largely responsible for the summer’s record warmth, fueled in part by the return of El Niño, a warmer than normal sea surface temperature (and higher sea levels) in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
Scientists expect to see the biggest impacts of El Niño in February, March, and April 2024 causing effects like bringing cooler, wetter conditions to the U.S. Southwest and drought to countries in the western Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia.
Rember that climate change is happening and it will get worse if we continue to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.
References:
www.nasa.gov
