"Since early 2023, the world has seen a steep rise in temperatures that scientists are struggling to explain. Our contributor Elizabeth Kolbert talked with Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s top climate scientist, about possible causes of the warming and why experts cannot account for the heat."
"About 18 months ago, climate scientists began to notice something strange. In March of 2023, global sea surface temperatures started to rise. In a warming world, the seas would be expected to grow hotter, but the rise, which came at a time when the Pacific Ocean was in the neutral phase of the weather pattern known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, was unusually steep. In April, 2023, sea surface temperatures set a new record. They did so again in May.
As the months went on, the weirdness continued. In the summer of 2023, the world entered an El Niño, the warm phase of ENSO. El Niños typically bring higher temperatures, but in the second half of 2023, both sea surface and air temperatures increased so much that scientists were stunned. One called the figures “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”
In an essay that appeared in Nature this past March, NASA’s chief climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt said: “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.”
Officially, the El Niño ended in May 2024. But global temperatures have remained stubbornly high. This year they are expected to set yet another record."
Elizabeth Kolbert reports for Yale Environment 360 October 10, 2024.
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