2023 will be the hottest in recorded history. According to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, average global temperatures in 2023 have been more than 1.4°C warmer than pre-industrial levels.
This is dangerously close to the 1.5°C threshold set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement: the point at past which scientists believe the world will experience some of the deadliest and irreversible impacts of climate change.
Deadly heatwaves have hit regions across the globe, with temperatures reaching as high as 45°C in the Mediterranean and soaring above 50°C in places including the US and China.
For Britons, the most immediate impact of these unprecedented temperatures was likely felt when travelling abroad, with intense heat and wildfires bringing chaos to thousands of holidaymakers’ plans throughout the summer.
But the extreme weather has also had a notable impact on life in Britain – and this is only set to continue, with climate change contributing to soaring food prices and making its mark on our delicate ecosystems.
“The global temperatures in 2023 staggered climate scientists because of how much warmer it showed the earth had become,” said Professor Martin Siegert, co-director of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change.
“For every month since May, the temperature of earth’s surface was the warmest ever recorded in that month. Since June that has almost continuously been at 1.5°C above normal and in November it reached 2°C above normal.”
According to scientists, 2023’s exceptional temperatures are due to the combined effects of climate change and an emerging El Niño, the climate pattern in the eastern Pacific Ocean that leads to unusually warm surface waters.
Many predict that 2024 will be even hotter, as El Niño continues to push temperatures above average into the spring.
The extreme weather of 2023 has provided a glimpse of how climate change can impact the global economy, with knock-on consequences for all countries – including those with traditionally mild climates like the UK.
This is particularly noticeable when looking at global food prices. Research released in November by the climate research group the Energy and Climate Institute found that climate change has added £192 to the average UK household’s shopping bill in 2023, accounting for a third of total food inflation.
A big reason for this is Britain’s reliance on food imports from tropical countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, including India, Kenya and Vietnam.
One pertinent example is India, which restricted rice exports this summer due to fears of the impact of El Niño on crop yields. The move caused the rice prices to soar globally.
India is the biggest exporter of rice to the UK, responsible for providing roughly a third – 146 million kilogrammes – of the grain last year.
“This is not an insignificant quantity of food. It’s a lot, which means loads to the Indian economy, but it also means loads to families here because lots of people eat rice as a staple,” said Amber Sawyer, Energy and Climate Analyst at ECIU.
Overall, the ECIU predicts climate change has added £361 to UK shopping bills in 2022 and 2023 combined, and said 2024 could be even worse for shoppers due to the ongoing impact of El Niño.
While places such as Brazil, China and Hawaii saw some of the most extreme weather in 2023, temperature records were also broken here in the UK.
June brought an unprecedented marine heatwave off the coast of the UK, with ocean temperatures more than two degrees above normal.
“We’ve never had anything like that around Britain,” said Professor Daniela Schmidt, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol, who said marine heatwaves are usually only recorded in places like the Mediterranean or around Australia.
She said the impact of the marine heatwave is “slower onset and long term”, but will likely include a reduction in the number of larvae being produced by marine organisms.
“We will have fewer little fish next year and then that was impact the system, which is already heavily stressed by overfishing,” she said.
“It’s fish. It could be our shellfish – so our oysters and our mussels – it has impacts on our seagrass and kelp, which are really important because they help the ecosystems draw down [carbon dioxide].”
While many Britons looking back on the summer of 2023 will likely remember a wet July and August, the summer was bookended by two extremes.
In September, the UK recorded seven consecutive days above 30°C for the first time ever, while June 2023 was the hottest June on record in the UK.
Mr Siegert said Britons have already “normalised the severity” of new weather patterns.
“In years gone by it was very unusual for anywhere in the UK to hit 30 degrees centigrade and we do that regularly now,” he said, adding that this new normal is already forcing us to adapt our behaviour – even if we do not immediately notice.
September’s unexpected heatwave impacted sporting events such as the Richmond Marathon, which was cancelled half-way through as temperatures soared above 30°C in London’s Kew Gardens.
Meanwhile, the RSPCA was forced to issue an urgent warning to pet owners to warn them against walking dogs in the peak heat.
In more recent months, the UK has also been hit by a series of severe storms and floods, which scientists say are made more likely due to climate change as warmer temperatures increase moisture in the air.
Mr Siegert said he recently decided not to attend an event in London due to fears of not making it back to his home in Cornwall due to flooding in the South West.
“People are now going to start thinking I cannot risk it. I need to be somewhere for a certain meeting or to do something, but the weather conditions are so severe, the infrastructure cannot cope,” he said.
“That probably starts to evade lots of different thought processes…People either consciously or unconsciously are making decisions in relation to what they’re experiencing. I’m sure everybody’s starting to reconsider the way that they work and the way that they travel and operate in relation to extreme things.”
