Not just another dot on the graph?

As the climate monitoring groups add an additional dot to their graphs this week, there is some disquiet among people paying attention about just how extraordinary 2023 really was.

First, it’s been obvious for months that 2023 would be a record year – in temperatures (at the surface, troposphere and in the ocean), in Antarctic sea ice, in the number of big climate disasters etc. But this was not at all obvious at the beginning of the year – even assuming that El Niño would develop by the this winter. Indeed, even as late as October, with only two months to go, the estimates for the annual mean still did not encompass the eventual annual number.

In the GISTEMP product, the record was easily broken, and by a record amount. Only the jump from 2014 to 2015 (coincidentally (?) also a year in which El Niño developed over the year) was comparable (both 2023 and 2015 broke the previous record by more than 0.15ºC).

Read part two at: Not just another dot on the graph? Part II