2023 IS HIGHLY likely to be the warmest year of modern records, according to analysis by a climate data organisation.

Berkeley Earth, a non-profit organisation in the US that records and analyses data on global temperatures and air pollution, has released its analysis for July – the hottest month on record.

“Surprisingly strong warming” in June and July, coupled with the likelihood of a strong El Niño event (a periodic pattern of warmer weather), have increased the possibility that 2023 will be the warmest year on record to “99%”, making it “virtually certain”, Berkeley Earth said. 

“This forecast probability is higher than last month’s report, when the likelihood of a record warm year was estimated at 81%. It also represents a large change from the forecast at the beginning of the year (before the development of El Niño), when only a 14% chance of a record 2023 was estimated.”

The average temperature across the earth last month was 17.2 degrees Celsius, the first-ever monthly average ever recorded of more than 17 degrees.

The previous record was set in July 2019, which has been beaten by 0.26 degrees in what Berkeley Earth has called a “surprisingly large margin, well outside the margin of uncertainty”.

July 2023 was around 1.54 degrees hotter than the average temperature in the period of 1850 to 1900. Records were broken both on land and at sea, with the North Atlantic reaching an all-time high temperature.

Overall, 84% of the Earth’s surface was “significantly warm” compared to the average at a local level compared to the period of 1951 to 1980, and 10.8% experienced its warmest July average locally.

There were particularly warm conditions observed in the North Atlantic, Eastern Equatorial Pacific, Northern South America, Mexico, Northern Africa, and Northern Canada.

Berkeley Earth’s analysis has found that the record temperatures last month were driven primarily by the combined effect of human-caused global warming and a strengthening of the El Niño.

It also may have been influenced to a lesser extent, according to Berkeley Earth, by an underwater volcanic eruption last year that sent a high concentration of water vapour into the atmosphere; new rules on shipping in recent years that reduced sulfur emissions (which had a short-term cooling effect); and the current stage of the 11-year solar activity cycle, which can cause slightly warmer conditions during phases of increased solar radiation. 

Climate scientists look not only at temperature averages, but also at a measurement called temperature anomaly – the amount that a temperature diverged from the average of a given time period.

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The global mean anomaly in July was the “most extreme ever observed during Northern [hemisphere] summer”.

“One of the Paris Agreement goals is to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline,” Berkeley Earth stated.

“That goal is defined in reference to the average of climate over many years, so a few individual months above 1.5 degrees do not automatically mean that the target has been exceeded.

“However, isolated anomalies above 1.5 degrees are a sign that the Earth is getting close to that limit. It is likely that global warming will cause the long-term average to exceed 1.5  degrees during the 2030s unless significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are achieved soon.”