The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has declared 2023 the hottest year on record globally, likely making it the world’s warmest in the last 100,000 years, Reuters reports.
The planet’s temperature averaged 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer in 2023 than the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but temperatures exceeded that level on nearly half of the days in 2023.
Despite climate targets set by governments and companies, CO2 emissions hit record levels in 2023, with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaching 419 parts per million.
