Climate and weather researchers weren’t expecting an exceptional year. But 2023 clocked in as the world’s hottest on record — a surprise to many scientists despite human-driven climate change’s longstanding link to higher temperatures worldwide.
“We’re frankly astonished,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said last Friday in a media briefing.
READ MORE: Earth was hotter than ever in 2023, approaching 1.5-degree warming limit
Prior to last year, 2016 held the title of hottest year on record. But 2023 was warmer in comparison by “a whopping margin,” Russ Vose, monitoring and assessment chief at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, noted during the briefing.
2023 also featured the most annual billion-dollar disasters on record in the United States. The country endured 28 different climate and weather catastrophes that caused damage amounting to at least $1 billion in 2023, according to analysis from NOAA. 2020 held the previous record with 22 such events that year.
Time will tell what types of temperatures and weather and climate events the globe will see in 2024. But we can expect years like 2023 will become more common as the planet continues to warm, said Barbara Boustead, a meteorologist at NOAA’s National Weather Service.
A view of destroyed homes in the aftermath of a tornado, after a monster storm system tore through the South and Midwest on Friday in Little Rock, Arkansas, April 1, 2023. Photo by Cheney Orr/Reuters
“What a year like 2023 shows us about 2024 and beyond is that these extreme temperatures, this extreme condition of the planet, is no longer just in the range of what can happen,” Boustead added. “It is in the range of what has happened.”
Here are some more takeaways from these analyses, and what they tell us about the future when it comes to climate change.
Earth grazed a key climate threshold
Graphic by Jenna Cohen/PBS NewsHour
Analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) dubbed 2023 the hottest year yet based on records dating back to 1850. A few days later, researchers from NASA and NOAA announced that their analyses drew the same conclusion.
The C3S analysis said that 2023 was 1.48°C warmer compared to pre-industrial levels, referring to the period between 1850 and 1900. C3S also predicted that by the end of February 2024, the previous 12 months will have exceeded 1.5°C. That’s the amount of warming that countries said they’d try to stay below as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
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Above 1.5°C of warming, severe consequences of climate change — including human and ecosystem threats like droughts and heat waves — become more likely to occur, according to NOAA. These effects would be especially felt in places that are particularly vulnerable to and least responsible for human-driven warming, the agency noted.
Grazing that threshold or even surpassing it in a single year doesn’t mean the Paris Agreement’s goal is no longer achievable. Boustead noted that there’s nothing magic about 1.5°C, but it does help symbolize trackable warming on the planet. When we hit or approach it — like in 2023, where C3S reported that close to half of days were more than 1.5°C warmer compared to its pre-industrial level — it’s a warning sign that former extremes eventually may become more like a baseline.
Vose noted in the briefing that the past 10 years have been the warmest on record, and that each of the past four decades have been warmer than the one before it.
FILE PHOTO: A man walks on the cracked ground of the Baells reservoir as drinking water supplies plunged to their lowest level since 1990 due to extreme drought in Catalonia, in the village of Cersc, in the region Bergueda, Spain, March 14, 2023. File photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters
NOAA predicts that there’s a one in three chance that 2024 will “beat” 2023, plus a 99 percent chance that 2024 will rank in the top five warmest years, he added.
But Vose said that it’s important to take any predictions “with a grain of salt” – researchers initially forecasted just a 7 percent chance 2023 would break the heat record.
A range of factors — including general warming due to human-caused climate change, the El Niño climate pattern, record-low Antarctic sea ice and others — contributed to 2023’s record-breaking heat, but they don’t tell the full story. Schmidt said more work has to be done to fully understand why the year was so hot.
“In 2024, we’ll be seeing whether this persists or whether it kind of goes back to a normal pattern,” he said. “And that will be kind of telling as to whether 2023 was just a very unusual combination of things that all added up to what we saw, or whether there’s something systematically different going forward.”
A variety of extremes helped break disaster records
Graphic by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
From the lethal wildfires that struck Maui to catastrophic flooding in the Northeast to destructive tornado outbreaks in the central U.S., the nation saw a wide range of disasters in 2023.
Of the 28 billion-dollar disasters that struck the U.S. in 2023, 17 were classified as severe weather/hail events. “In the world of meteorologists and climatologists,” Boustead said, the term “severe weather” refers to “severe thunderstorms.”
READ MORE: Billion-dollar weather and climate disasters broke U.S. record in 2023, NOAA says
But NOAA’s report also serves as a good reminder of just how variable costly disasters can be, Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, a professor of climatology at the University of Vermont and Vermont’s state climatologist, told PBS NewsHour via email.
Catastrophic flooding can occur across seasons, tornado outbreaks can occur beyond “Tornado Alley” and the risk for severe wildfires extends beyond solely arid states in the West — 2023’s list exemplifies all of that, Dupigny-Giroux noted.
The country has consistently endured both more numerous and more different types of weather and climate extremes that can cause billion-dollar disasters annually compared to other countries, NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick said during the briefing.
A backyard pool is left hanging on a cliffside after torrential rain brought havoc on the beachfront town of San Clemente, California, U.S. March 16, 2023. Mike Blake/Reuters
2023’s series of disasters generated a total of more than $90 billion in damage, though the agency noted that number may rise when more complete calculations are done for an event that occurred late in the year.
During the briefing, Vose noted that not every extreme weather or climate event that occurs across the globe is directly caused by climate change, and that the upward trend in the U.S. is due to a range of factors. But it’s true that a warming world brings more extremes, he said.
“In theory, climate change could have worsened some of the events this year. But individual events have complicated and particular circumstances that need to be sorted out,” Vose said.
Preparation for ‘multiple and overlapping’ extreme events is vital
Graphic by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
Regardless of direct attribution to climate change, extreme events like these — which are increasing in frequency and cost — “have human consequences, ecological impacts and socioeconomic effects,” NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick told reporters last week.
Year to year, the mix of specific disasters differs, Boustead noted, and it’s standard to have variation in terms of the numbers and costs associated with billion-dollar disasters. Some years may have fewer — but more expensive — disasters, while others have a higher number of billion-dollar disasters whose individual costs are not as high, she said. But what endures is the toll these events take.
“Impact-wise, we’re still looking at significant damages and impacts to communities and the people who live in them,” Boustead said.
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So far, 2017 holds the record for the costliest year yet, at a total of $383.7 billion. In terms of more recent years, 2022 is so far the third costliest year for these disasters, generating $178.8 billion in damages.
As the hazards associated with climate change continue to evolve, it’s important to ensure our ability to understand those changing trends and patterns keeps up, Dupigny-Giroux said.
“The multiple and overlapping events of 2023 and previous years, suggest that we need to take a holistic approach to preparing for and increasing our resilience to compound and consecutive hazards,” she said. “As the characteristics and timing of weather and climate hazards continue to evolve under changing atmospheric, ocean and hydrologic conditions, our understanding of these changes in trends and patterns also need to remain at the cutting edge.”
Dupigny-Giroux added that communicating these changing human risks must be made vital to planning efforts.
Helping the country adapt to and prepare for climate change, Boustead noted, is one of NOAA’s key goals through its Climate Ready Nation program. The billion-dollar disasters list helps shed light on how widespread these events can be, making them feel “closer to home” for many people, she added, particularly in the context of climate change.
“When the events increase in frequency and become more distributed around the country, there’s a greater chance that something happens near to you or near to someone you love,” Boustead said.
