MEMPHIS, Tenn. — At the beginning of every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gives a summary of the weather the globe experienced. Recently, this report has included more and more record-breaking heat, and 2023 was no exception.
2023 now ranks as the hottest year in the modern climate record (1850-present), according to NOAA, NASA and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF).
While this is a story by itself, there is also the story about how much warmer 2023 was than the previous hottest year, 2016.
Last year ended up being 2.12° above the climate average, which was a very large jump from 2022 and the previous record holder, 2016. A large contributing factor to this heat was our oceans, which saw a record-breaking heat wave along with a developing El-Nino, which brought warmer waters to the Pacific.
With the addition of 2023, there is now a concerning trend that all of the top 10 warmest years in the modern record have been recorded in the past 10 years. This shows the increasingly warm world we live in and serves as a warning as to what is to come.
This trend is even more pronounced when we use historical data derived from methods like ice core sampling and tree ring samples that can give us a look back almost 2 thousand years. The recent warming in the past 7 decades sticks out very clearly.
From long-term trends, we can now talk about what is currently going on. The Mid-South is coming off some of the coldest weather it has seen in years with negative temperatures greeting many communities this week.
This might seem counterintuitive to a warming world but Memphis is still seeing effects from this trend.
Using a tool called the Climate Shift Index we can use climate trends to see that these frigid temperatures that many woke up to are becoming much less common.
Some of the trends include our rapidly warming winters which have seen an average temperature increase of almost 4 degrees since 1970.
With Memphis coming off of its 4th hottest year and 2nd warmest winter in 2023, as we look forward, there are a few things we can expect to see. Weather patterns across the US are expected to become more extreme, whether that means severe weather, or heat waves that we experience. NOAA also notes that 2024 will likely keep warming with a 99% chance that it also ends up ranking in the top 5 hottest years on record.
