Muscat: Several weather monitoring stations recorded higher than the average monthly temperature for December 2023, according to Oman Meteorology.
Al Buraimi station recorded a temperature increase of +1.9 degrees Celsius, while Masirah station recorded an increase of 1. 2 degrees Celsius compared to the average temperature for December.
The highest temperatures recorded in Celsius were in Wadi Al Maawil (34.8), Barka (34), Mirbat (33.8), and Salalah (33.2) among others.
The lowest temperatures recorded in Celsius were Al Mazyouna (10), Maqshin (9.9), and Jabal Shams (-1.3).
The monitoring station on Masirah Island recorded the lowest temperature for September in 1967 when it reached 10 degrees Celsius.
The highest recorded temperature was in December 2016, when it reached 32.5 degrees Celsius. As for December 2023, 30 degrees Celsius was recorded as the highest temperature, and the lowest recorded temperature was 20 degrees Celsius.
It may be that the year 2023 was the hottest on record, with global average temperatures at 1.46C above pre-industrial levels and 0.13C higher than the eleven-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record.
The confirmation arrived after the European Union Climate Change Copernicus Service (CS3) announced that November 2023 was the hottest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22C, 0.85C above the 1991-2020 average for that month and 0.32C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020.
The extreme weather the world witnessed this year can be attributed to various factors, including natural variations like the influential El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which has significantly altered global weather patterns and pushed global temperatures off the charts, according to earth.org.
The biggest culprit, however, remains humanity’s insatiable consumption of fossil fuels, which is associated with the release of huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
At the UN climate summit earlier this month, COP28, world leaders reached an agreement that explicitly called on countries to reduce fossil fuel consumption, earth.org said.
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