Climate scientists have warned that the world could breach a new temperature record in 2023 or 2024, triggered by climate change and the expected return of the El Niño weather phenomenon.
After three years of the La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which generally lowers global temperatures slightly, climate models suggest that the world will witness a return to El Niño, the warmer counterpart, later this year.
According to scientific studies, the world’s hottest year on record so far was 2016, coinciding with a strong El Niño – although climate change has triggered extreme temperatures even in years without the phenomenon.
Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022, while climate change-fuelled extreme rain caused disastrous flooding in Pakistan.
Scientists said that Despite most of the world’s major emitters pledging to eventually slash their net emissions to zero, global CO2 emissions last year continued to rise.
