The British Met Office predicts that next year will be the tenth in a row that global temperatures will be at least 1°C warmer than pre-industrial times.
Specifically, he estimates that the average temperature in 2023 will be about 1.2°C warmer than before humans started causing climate change, so we should expect one of the hottest years on record. The hottest year on record dating back to 1850 is 2016, when the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific increased global temperatures.
Professor Adam Skiff of the weather service comments that even without El Niño, next year could set a record. Another professor added that “global temperatures over the past three years have been affected by the prolonged El Niño effect on the sea surface in the tropical Pacific”, explaining that this phenomenon has a temporary cooling effect on average temperatures.
Climatologists usually take the average global temperature in the 20th century or in the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) as the zero mark, but these values u200bu200bare almost the same. It is about +14°С. By the way, this is 32 (and now already 33) degrees more than it would be if there were no greenhouse gases around the Earth and no atmosphere at all.
However, the agency’s climate model suggests that this effect will end, causing parts of the Pacific to return to relatively warmer conditions. “This shift is likely to result in warmer global temperatures in 2023 than in 2022.” “Some places, like the Arctic, have warmed by a few degrees since the pre-industrial era,” said Doug Schmidt, the agency’s chief expert, commenting on data from the past decade.
Global warming – good or bad
Of course, climate change can have its upsides. For example, warming in the Arctic will apparently lead to easier navigation along the Northern Sea Route. Increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air will also contribute to the accelerated growth of plants, which will increase the overall yield. But at the same time, it will also lead to the destruction of buildings built on permafrost, and, with a high probability, will cause an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events – droughts, floods and storms. According to statistics, in recent decades there has been a significant increase in the frequency of climate-related natural disasters – storms, floods, landslides, and so on. At the same time, the frequency of similar events that are not related to climate (for example, earthquakes) remains constant.
If we talk about the global picture, then a detailed fairly recent assessment of the economic impact of climate change is given, for example, in article Stanford researchers in Nature. Armed with historical data, scientists analyzed the dependence of the GDP of different countries in different years on the average annual temperature in their territory and tried to predict how this indicator will differ in two scenarios: if global warming can be kept within one and a half degrees, and if it reaches and exceeds two degrees above the pre-industrial level.
Two conclusions can be drawn from the calculations: the strongest impact of warming in the “bad” scenario will be in the equatorial, mostly poor countries. While the northern states, such as Russia and Canada, may even benefit economically from “additional” warming.
Global warming – refutation of the theory
However, for every opinion there is a rebuttal. Thus, a second group of scientists appeared, supporters of the natural factor. Oleg Sorokhtin, Academician of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was the first to create a mathematical theory of the greenhouse effect. From his calculations it follows that significant emissions of technogenic carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere almost do not change the thermal regime of the Earth.
The theory of Alexander Gorodnitsky, not only a leading scientist, but also a poet, the founder of the art song genre in Russia, changed the established opinion of many skeptics. He says that in the history of the Earth, warming happened before, long before not only industry, but also man himself appeared!
According to the conclusions of the geophysicist, the level of the World Ocean rose by tens of meters in the Jurassic period (about 100-120 million years ago), and in the “Cambria” (more than 500 million years ago), according to available geochemical data, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere 18-20 times more than modern, allegedly polluted by us. The scientist concludes that we are experiencing the last stage of global warming, which, following historical logic, will be replaced by cooling.
Summing up, it should be noted that there is still no very basic theory that would become a key explanation for the causes and consequences of global warming. Every year, the world community is excited by a new unique expert opinion on this issue. Nevertheless, the world has come to one very important conclusion: the Earth’s climate is changing, and a person can either speed up this process or slow it down, but not cancel it.
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