New research published in the journal Nature on May 14 has revealed that the summer of 2023 was record hot, and this year was the hottest globally since 1850, when temperature records began. This extreme heat is a result of human activities releasing greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Trees provide a snapshot of past climate due to their sensitivity to changes in rainfall and temperature, which is reflected in their growth rings.
Lead author Jan Esper, a climate professor at Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University, emphasized that human-caused climate change has pushed the summer temperature of 2023 in the Northern Hemisphere to the highest level in the past 2,000 years. The team used tree-ring data from various locations across the Northern Hemisphere to estimate global temperatures from the 1st century to 1850. According to conservative estimates, the summer of 2023 was at least 0.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere during that period.
Max Torbenson, study co-author, noted that 25 of the past 28 years exceeded the highest temperature in the summer of 246. The coolest summer in the past 2,000 years was nearly 4 degrees Celsius cooler than the summer of 2023, attributed to a major volcanic eruption. While volcanic activity may bring cooler conditions in
