‘Humbling, and a bit worrying’: Scientists fail to fully explain record global heat
Deadly heat in the Southwest. Hot-tub temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Sweltering conditions in Europe, Asia and South America. That 2023 was Earth’s hottest year on record was in some ways no surprise. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about rapidly rising temperatures driven by humanity’s relentless burning of fossil fuels. But last year’s sudden spike in global temperatures blew far beyond what statistical climate models had predicted, leading one noted climate scientist to warn that the world may be entering “uncharted territory.” … [R]esearchers are scrambling to explain why 2023 was so anomalously hot. Many theories have been proposed, but “as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened,” Schmidt wrote.
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