Whether it's greenhouse gas concentrations, global ocean and land temperatures, global sea level rise, areas affected by extreme drought, or the melting of Antarctic ice — in every one of these categories, 2023 saw the highest values ever recorded. The latest international annual report on the global climate, published by the US weather and oceanography agency, documents the rapid warming of the Earth and its consequences. In 2023, the El Niño phenomenon acted as an additional booster. Contributions to the report also came from researchers at the University of Graz.
Andrea Steiner, a climate physicist at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz, researches changes in the atmosphere. "In 2023, record temperatures were once again observed in the troposphere. The combination of the short-term effects of El Niño with the long-term impacts of high greenhouse gas concentrations contributed to further warming of this lowest layer of the atmosphere," the scientist reports.
"A long-term cooling is taking place in the stratosphere above, caused by the human-induced rise in greenhouse gases and ozone depletion," explains Steiner, adding: "Furthermore, the middle stratosphere was abnormally cold from 2022 until mid-2023, because the Hunga volcanic eruption injected enormous amounts of water vapour up to an altitude of 50 kilometres." Overall, however, the long-term temperature changes both at the Earth's surface and in the atmosphere can be clearly attributed to human-made greenhouse gas emissions, says the climate physicist.
Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer from the Institute of Geography and Regional Research studies the impacts of climate change on glaciers and permafrost in the Alpine region and has contributed research findings on the velocity of rock glaciers, collected jointly with TU Graz. These high-mountain formations are mixtures of debris and ice that remains frozen on the inside throughout the year. They creep slowly downhill, much like a lava flow. Their movement depends primarily on the thermal conditions of the permafrost. The more it warms up and the more liquid water is present in the system, the faster the rock glacier moves…
Read more at: www.uni-graz.at
