Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Sarah Kaplan). Here’s an excerpt:
April 19, 2024
As soon as the planet entered an El Niño climate pattern — a naturally occurring phenomenon associated with warming in the Pacific Ocean — scientists knew it would start breaking records. El Niños are associated with spikes in Earth’s overall temperature, and this one was unfolding on a planet that has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels…Yet this El Niño didn’t just break records; it obliterated them. Four consecutive days in July became the hottest days in history. The Northern Hemisphere saw its warmest summer — and then its warmest winter — known to science…
By the end of 2023, Earth’s average temperature was nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the preindustrial average — and about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than climate modelers predicted it would be, even taking El Niño into account. Researchers have spent the past several months investigating possible explanations for that 0.2 C discrepancy: a volcanic eruption that spewed heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, changes in shipping fuel that affected the formation of clouds that block the sun. So far, those factors can only account for a small fraction of the anomaly, raising fears that scientists’ models may have failed to capture a longer-lasting change in the climate system…
Even if global average temperatures do return to a more predictable trajectory, the effects of warming on people and ecosystems have already entered uncharted territory. Sea ice around Antarctica shrank to its smallest extent ever last year. The mighty Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began. Researchers this week declared a global coral bleaching event — just the fourth in history — and warned that the crisis in the oceans is on track to set a record.