AP Explains: 2023 was the hottest year on record

(12 Jan 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Death Valley National Park, California – 16 July 2023
1. Various of people on platform over desert floor
HEADLINE: AP Explains: 2023 was the hottest year on record

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Washington D.C. – 11 January 2024
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Seth Borenstein, Associated Press: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“So the world’s biggest and best science agencies have come out and done their calculations. And they said 2023 was the hottest year on record by far. A quarter degree warmer, a quarter degree Fahrenheit warmer than the previous record in 2016. That, you know, that’s that’s all well and good. Those are numbers. But numbers don’t really tell the story. What really tells the story is what it means to you and I, because a few tenths of a degree doesn’t really seem that important. It is, though, because with every 10th of a degree you get wilder weather. They’re floods, they’re hurricanes, they’re droughts, they’re wildfires and all sorts of other storms.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Death Valley National Park, California – 16 July 2023
3. Various of people posing for picture with thermometer
4. Mid of Caution, Extreme Heat Danger sign

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Fort St. John, Canada – 2 July 2023
5. Various wide shots of smoke and flame billowing up from burning forest in Donnie Creek wildfire

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Blantyre, Malawi – 13 March 2023
6. Houses destroyed by strong winds and torrential rain

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Washington D.C. – 11 January 2024
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Seth Borenstein, Associated Press: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“We talked to dozens of scientists about this. Many of them think we’re looking at an even warmer year in 2024, and they worry that what we’re starting to see is global warming accelerating, that we are going up an escalator of global warming. We have natural variances that go up and down, like taking a step up and down an escalator, but we just suddenly took a big jump up the escalator and we may be in a new regime of worsening. And while weather, we won’t know for a few more months whether we just went through a crazy year that was a natural, weird freak year, or whether we’re in for a new era of worsening warming.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Urquiza, Argentina – 20 March 2023
8. Various of dried up soil and soybean plants
9. Agronomist engineer Guillermo Cuitino grabbing a dry soybean plant
STORYLINE:
Two top American science agencies announced Friday that global average temperatures for 2023 shattered existing heat records by a bit more than a quarter of a degree (0.15 degrees Celsius).

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculated that Earth in 2023 had an average temperature of 59.12 degrees (15.08 degrees Celsius). That’s 0.27 degrees (0.15 degrees Celsius) warmer than the previous record set in 2016 and 2.43 degrees (1.35 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.

NASA had the warming since the mid-19th century a bit higher at 2.5 degrees (1.39 degrees Celsius). Records go back to 1850.

Both NASA and NOAA said the last 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, have been the ten hottest years they’ve measured.

The World Meteorological Organization, combining the measurements announced Friday with Japanese and European calculations released earlier this month, pegged 2023 at 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.

Warming air and water is making deadly and costly heat waves, floods, droughts, storms and wildfires more intense and more likely.

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