FIGURES showing last year was the joint-second-hottest on record are a “stark reminder of the climate change challenges” the Island faces, the Assistant Environment Minister has warned.
Despite a cool and wet summer, the average temperature in 2023 was 13.34°C – the same as 2014 and only 0.22°C below the record-breaking high set two years ago.
Another dark red line will now be painted on the climate-stripe mural at the Waterfront which shows the rapid and sustained rise in average temperatures since the 1990s.
Last year was also the wettest at the Howard Davis Farm weather station in Trinity since records began in 1932, with 1,352.9mm of rain being registered.
At the Maison St Louis Observatory in St Saviour, where records date back to 1894, a total of 1,074mm was recorded, making it the fifth-wettest on record. The wettest year at the site was 2020, with 1,178.4mm.
Assistant Environment Minister Hilary Jeune said the figures demonstrated that the Island should play its part in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
“Last year was among the hottest and wettest years we’ve seen in Jersey, following [the previous year’s] record-breaker, and the statistics are another stark reminder of the climate change challenges we face.
“We’ve made some significant steps forward over the past year, as we began to implement the policies and initiatives of the Carbon Neutral Roadmap on our journey to net zero.
“As we enter 2024, I’m optimistic that Islanders will play an ever-growing part in reducing emissions through changes, some big and some small, to the way we go about our daily lives.”
Globally, 2023 is expected to have been the hottest year on record, with a global mean temperature between January and November of 15.1°C – 1.46°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. It was 0.13°C higher than the equivalent 11-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record.
Paul Aked, head of meteorology for Jersey Met, said: “While we may look back at 2023 and feel it has not been a particularly warm year, especially during July and August, the annual temperature calculation uses both the daily maximum and minimum temperature readings throughout the year.
“We’ve had many mild nights during the year – 14 were the mildest for that night since records began. Twenty-two nights during the year recorded a minimum temperature higher than the average daytime maximum for that day, ten of those during a very mild December.
“September was the warmest for that month on record, June the second warmest, with October and December both being the fourth warmest, when compared with records dating back to 1894, all contributing to the year being the equal-second-hottest on record.”
The sea temperature was the fourth-warmest since records began in 1960, and was above average on all but a few days during the year.
Last year, the UK’s Wildlife Trusts warned that a succession of heatwaves and droughts over recent years had left nature “pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover”.
Last month, the UK’s National Trust said that increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, including mild winters, were “causing chaos” for nature, disrupting normal behaviour and allowing invasive species and diseases to survive.
Local environmentalists echoed the concerns, with the JEP’s nature correspondent, Bob Tompkins, saying that the majority of wildlife was struggling to “keep up” with changing temperatures, with some species migrating while others declined.
And conservationist Stephen Le Quesne said that “unbalanced and chaotic” weather patterns also posed a threat to food supplies, by affecting harvests and even causing “complete crop failures”.
Meanwhile, an active Asian-hornet nest has been found in St Peter – at a time of year when colonies have usually died away (see page 3). Experts believe that the mild winter could be one of the reasons it has survived for so long.
