Extreme Temperature Diary- Monday November 20th, 2023/Main Topic: We’ve Reached the +2.0°C Threshold All Too Early

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The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: We’ve Reached the +2.0°C Threshold All Too Early

Dear Diary. The Earth’s average temperature is calculated daily using instruments that measure readings both on land and sea. Friday climate scientists and environmentalists were aghast when that average reading hit +2.0°C above preindustrial conditions for the first time in history…a reading that we were not forecast to see until perhaps the 2030s at the earliest and hopefully not at all. November 17th, 2023 should be a date from infamy since we have failed to reign in carbon pollution starting in the 1980s when Dr. James Hansen put the climate front and center before the public.

Most scientists do say that once this current El Niño episode fades that average should fall below +2.0°C and probably below +1.5°C, except for Dr. James Hensen, who thinks that we are above +1.5°C to stay. Still, reaching +2.0°C during 2023 is very unnerving and leads me to believe that Dr. Hansen maybe correct since averages will need to take a big tumble just to get down to +1.5°C.

As a reminder, though:

Here are a few statements coming from experts when the +2.0C was breached on Friday:

Here is that Washington Post report on the breaching of +2.0°C:

Earth just passed a feared global warming milestone for the first time – The Washington Post

Earth passed a feared global warming milestone Friday, at least briefly

Average global temperatures were more than 2 degrees Celsius above a pre-industrial benchmark on Friday, preliminary data show

By Scott Dance

November 19, 2023

A woman passes a man resting on the tires of a truck at a warehouse and storage site during a heat wave in São Paulo, Brazil, on Friday. (Amanda Perobelli/Reuters)

The planet marked an ominous milestone Friday: The first day global warmth crossed a threshold, if only briefly, that climate scientists have warned could have calamitous consequences.

Preliminary data show global temperatures averaged more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above a historic norm, from a time before humans started consuming fossil fuels and emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases.

That does not mean efforts to limit global warming have failed — yet. Temperatures would have to surpass the 2-degree benchmark for months and years at a time before scientists consider it breached.

But it’s a striking reminder that the climate is moving into uncharted territory. Friday marked the first time that everyday fluctuations around global temperature norms, which have been steadily increasing for decades, swung the planet beyond the dangerous threshold. It occurs after months of record warmth that have stunned many scientists, defying some expectations of how quickly temperatures would accelerate this year.

“I think while we should not read too much into a single day above 2C (or 1.5C for that matter) it’s a startling sign nonetheless of the level of extreme global temperatures we are experiencing in 2023,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Stripe and Berkeley Earth, said in a message to The Washington Post.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said Sunday on the social media platform X that Friday’s global temperatures were 1.17C (2.1F) above the 1991-2020 average, a record-setting margin.

Given how much human-caused warming had occurred by that period, that means Friday’s average global temperature was 2.06C (3.7F) above a preindustrial reference period, 1850-1900, she said.

The estimate of global warmth comes from a European model that uses the same sorts of observations used in weather predictions to instead look backward, and estimate global climate conditions nearly in real time.

Direct observations that scientists will gather and vet in the coming weeks could soon confirm the record warmth.

A year of record-setting warmth continues

That the globe surpassed the 2-degree warming benchmark for at least one day adds an exclamation point to a string of temperature records set in recent months.

Global temperatures set records in July, August, September and October. The Copernicus data shows that trend has been maintained, if not accelerated, into November.

Even before Saturday, scientists said 2023 was virtually certain to surpass 2016 as the globe’s warmest on record, and likely to mark one of its warmest periods in 125,000 years, going back to a time before Earth’s last ice age. That estimate is based on paleoclimate records that show there was at least no extended period of the sort of warmth the planet is now experiencing, and that temperatures are rising with unprecedented speed.

Analyses released this month show 2023 average global temperatures are likely to end up 1.3 to 1.4C (2.3 to 2.5F) above preindustrial levels. Climate scientists predict that sustained global warming at 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels could overwhelm societies and upend economies and political systems.

Planetary warming is only expected to accelerate in the coming months because of a deepening El Niño, the infamous climate pattern that drives weather extremes and raises global temperatures by releasing vast stores of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere.

But that surge of El Niño-fueled warmth typically does not arrive until after the climate pattern reaches its peak — something forecast to occur this winter. Because of that, scientists had said earlier this year they did not expect the globe to surge to such record warmth until 2024.

Friday’s milestone offers yet more proof of how the planet has defied climate scientists’ expectations this year.

By Scott Dance Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he most recently focused on climate change and the environment. Twitter

More:

Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is some November 2023 Climatology:

Here is More Climate and Weather News from Monday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More from the Weather Department:

More on the Environment and Nature:

More on Other Science and the Beauty of Earth and this Universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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