Science & technology | 2023, WTF?

Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why

Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a role

Sun glint on the Caspian Sea.
Photograph: NASA
|Washington, DC

Gavin Schmidt, a leading climate modeller and the boss of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) in New York City, is not noted for his humility. Nevertheless, writing in Nature, a journal, in March 2024, he confessed to being humbled by his inability, and that of his colleagues, to understand the extraordinary year through which they had just lived—2023 had been around 0.2°C (0.4°F) hotter than had been expected.

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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Annus sollicitissimus”

From the December 21st 2024 edition

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