Dubai will host COP28

Just weeks before COP28, this year's climate conference in Dubai, the non-profit organisation Climate Central calculated that from November 2022 to October 2023, the Earth's temperature was 1.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. The organisation states that October 2023 marked the end of a year with unprecedented average temperatures in over 120,000 years due to global warming. This means it has never been this hot since 120,000 years ago, when in Europe, just to give an example, mammoths grazed and Neanderthals hunted them. 1.3 degrees is awfully close to the limit of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures which was set in 2015 in Paris at the 21st COP. This abnormal heat is certainly due to global warming caused by human activities, but this year also El Niño played a role. El Niño is a cyclical climatic event that warms up the surface water of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The atmosphere over the Pacific warms up and in a chain reaction El Niño affects the climate worldwide.