The last days of December pass with weather that is not typical for this time of year. Daily temperatures hover around 15 degrees Celsius, and the lowest temperatures are far from minus.
After 2016, this year, 2023, is the hottest year. It was marked by supercell storms, floods, and the occurrence of El Niño, a phenomenon that occurs every four or seven years when warm water accumulates in the western Pacific.
Climatologist Vladimir Đurđević explains to "Vreme" that when warm water is spilled, a large amount of heat is transported from the ocean into the atmosphere and that those years are on average warmer than years when the El Niño phenomenon does not occur.
However, he says that this is only 10 percent of what has influenced this year to be the hottest, that global warming is a long-term process and that the planet is getting warmer.
New records in the new year
When asked what the next year will be like, Vladimir Đurđević answers that the predictions are rough, but that we know for sure that the peak of El Niño takes place from December to March next year. This would mean that the peak of that phenomenon, when the most energy is transferred from the Pacific to the atmosphere, is yet to come.
"Usually the year, not the one in which El Niño appears, but the next year has an even bigger anomaly and is even warmer", points out Đurđević and adds that major research centers announce that there is a high chance that the year 2024 will be warmer than the last, and that that trend can only be expected to stop in 2025.
What can a warmer planet lead to? Our interlocutor states that this means more extreme events.
"During the next year, we can expect various climatic extremes across the planet that we had the opportunity to see this year as well", says Đurđević, and that it is impossible to predict when and where they will happen, as well as whether they will affect our region as well.
Certainly, he says, a large number of heat waves, floods, intense rainfall, drought and the like can be expected.
More climate extremes
Đurđević warns that the whole world lives at an increased risk of facing climate extremes, which are the ultimate outcome of climate change, and that they contribute to great material damage and loss of human life.
This summer, citizens also faced supercell storms. All this, says our interlocutor, does not necessarily mean that there will be supercell storms this summer, but that there are high chances that in the near future there will be storms like we had this year.
"It will escalate as long as we keep adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Every year we add more carbon dioxide than the previous one, and that happened in 2023 as well, even though all countries signed the Paris Agreement," he explains.
According to that agreement, the signatories should start reducing the amount of carbon dioxide they add to the atmosphere in order to stop this process.
