No surprise, I wrote a paper on this.

83 - 2023 was a BAD year for the Earth’s Climate. (08/05/24)

Surface Air Temperature is the metric most people think of when they think of “Global Warming”. As you can see, global temperatures increased dramatically in 2023.

From about +1.2°C over the GISS baseline in January to about +1.7°C over baseline by December.

We just had a full year where EVERY DAY was warmer than the +1.5°C it was in June 2023.

As opposed to being focused in one region or another, the record heat was unusually widespread, with 14.5% of the world’s surface experiencing record heat — beating the previous June record set in 2023 by 7.4%.

THINGS HAVE NOT COOLED DOWN IN 2024.

That has implications about the future. Implications about “how fast” things will get worse.

Because, in 2023 the level of atmospheric CO2 jumped 84% more than usual.

World’s forests failed to curb 2023 climate emissions, study finds. — Reuters 072924

That means a record amount of carbon dioxide entered Earth’s atmosphere last year, further feeding global warming, the researchers said.

How much more?

The growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped 86% in 2023 compared to 2022. The CO2 level increased by +3.51ppm in a SINGLE year.

One of Earth’s major carbon sinks collapsed in 2023. — Schib.com 072524

“Extreme heat, drought and wildfires caused forests and other land ecosystems to emit almost as much carbon dioxide as they removed from the atmosphere in 2023, nearly canceling out a major natural sink of the greenhouse gas.”

Researchers say the TEMPORARY (emphasis mine) decline of this sink — which usually removes about a quarter of our annual CO2 emissions from the atmosphere — bodes ill for how these ecosystems will respond to future climate change.

Here’s what’s being discussed.

Human Emissions are projected to have risen 1.1 percent in 2023 to have reached a record high of +37.55 GtCO₂

FYI- A single gigatonne is 1,000,000,000 tonnes, and is often used when discussing human carbon dioxide emissions. This is roughly the mass of all land mammals (other than humans) in the world. It’s also roughly twice the mass of all of the people in the world. 40Gt is about 80X the body weight of every person on Earth.

NORMALLY, the Terrestrial Land “Sinks” absorb about 25% of that CO2 each year. That’s about 9.35 GtCO2 annually.

This “land carbon sink” exists because forests and other land ecosystems take up slightly more CO2 as they grow than they release when plants die and decompose or burn each year.

In 2023, the Terrestrial Land Sinks only absorbed about 0.44 GtCO2.

Conversely, they found that the ocean carbon sink increased in 2023 by around a gigatonne, ruling the oceans out as a source of the jump in atmospheric CO2.

So, about an extra 8 GtCO2 went into the atmosphere last year.

That extra 8GtCO2 is why the CO2 count in Mauna Loa jumped so much last year. It’s what pushed us up past +3ppm in a single year.

If this keeps up. Well, it’s obvious how much faster things will get a LOT WORSE.

Faster than Expected.