The anthropogenic increase in the temperature of the planet amounted to 1.19 degrees Celsius during the last decade (2014-2023) and it is the largest ever recorded, according to the annual report “Indicators of Global Climate Change”.

Looking at 2023 individually, more than 50 scientists, led by the University of Leeds, found that human-caused warming reached 1.3 °C. The overall temperature increase in the same year was 1.43 °C, which the researchers say shows that natural climate variability, particularly El Niño, also played a role in the record temperatures of 2023.

It found that anthropogenic temperature increase is rising at an “unprecedented rate”, reaching around 0.26°C per decade, according to data from 2014-2023. High levels of greenhouse gas emissions are also affecting the Earth’s energy balance: ocean stations and satellites monitor unprecedented heat fluxes in the Earth’s oceans, ice, soils and atmosphere. This heat flux is 50% higher than the long-term average.

“Our analysis shows that the level of human-caused global warming has continued to increase over the past year, even as climate action has slowed the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Global temperatures are still moving in the wrong direction, and faster than ever,” says director of the Priestley Center for the Future of Climate at the University of Leeds, Professor Piers Forster.

The report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, comes as climate experts meet in Bonn to prepare the ground for the COP29 climate conference in November in Baku, Azerbaijan.