News File Photo The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Viking Octantis cruises down Thunder Bay on June 30, 2023. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on Jan. 9 that 2023’s global temperature was the hottest year ever recorded.

ALPENA — The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on Jan. 9 that 2023’s global temperature was the hottest year ever recorded and is mere tenths of a degree from reaching the Paris Agreement limit countries set. Although Alpena may not have experienced its hottest year in 2023, the National Weather Service said the area tied with 2016 to be the third hottest year on record.

The planet reached a new height of 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, a timeframe when humanity started to burn fossil fuels on an industrial level.

According to the Paris Agreement, countries agreed in 2015 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels.

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, said that, at this point, reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius is inevitable and that everyone all around the globe should prepare for worsening conditions.

“Warmth is one aspect of increased greenhouse gases,” Overpeck said. “Michigan doesn’t get affected by this as much as the people down south where the number of days where it reaches 100 to 110 degrees is more often. We get extremes like higher precipitation and sometimes the lack of it with drier weather.”

Over the summer, Canadian wildfires ran rampant through Ontario and Quebec, with those dry weather winds carrying smoke and other particles down to U.S. locations, such as Northeast Michigan.

An ongoing trend of increased temperatures in Northeast Michigan, as each year since 2016, has had an annual temperature that went over the average normal temperature, all except for 2019.

Between 2020 and 2021, the average normal temperature increased by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, yet the annual temperature continued to go higher than the new 44.4 average temp.

According to the report by the European climate agency, the cause of the record-breaking temperatures stems from the global sea surface temperatures, which were reported to be unusually high in 2023, and El Nino, a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that releases heat from the ocean.

“More than 90% of heat trapped from greenhouse gases is stored in the ocean, which El Nino releases,” Overpeck said. “As more greenhouse gases are emitted by humans, more heat gets trapped and stored in the ocean, which is why El Nino releases more heat.”

Overpeck is happy that the Michigan Government is taking global warming seriously and creating good change in the state but said that the only way to stop the temperature from rising is by halting the use of fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases everywhere.

Even then, he said that scientists have not found a way to take carbon dioxide out of the air, but said it is theoretically possible.

“Natural climate solutions such as trees and forestry take care of a quarter of our emissions, but with wildfires and the deforestation of the Amazon jungles, there are no signs we can turn this around,” Overpeck said. “If we stop at two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, that will probably be the global temperature for hundreds of years.”

Overpeck said that climate scientists are debating about how El Nino will act for 2024, and could not say whether the new year will also break global heat records, but he was confident that the year will be very warm.