Macao’s mean air temperature was 23.4℃ last year, 0.6℃ above the city’s climatological norm for 1991 to 2020, according to recently released figures from the Statistics and Census Service (known by its Portuguese initials DSEC).
The number of very hot days (defined as 33℃ or higher) and hot nights (28℃ or higher) were also above normal. Meanwhile, there were 13.1 fewer cold days (at or below 12℃) in 2023 than there were in 2022, making for a total of 26.
The warming weather was accompanied by worsening air quality: each monitoring station recorded a year-on-year decrease in the number of “good air quality days” detected, the DSEC said. Moderate air quality days increased.
[See more: Climate Change 101: Better understand the environmental crisis with these essential terms]
Taipa’s monitoring station recorded the highest number of bad air quality days (32) and one very bad air quality day.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service has reported that 2023 was the warmest year on record globally, “overtaking by a large margin 2016, the previous warmest year.”
Last year’s average global temperature was 14.98℃. That’s 1.48℃ warmer than the 1850 to 1900 pre-industrial level, 0.6℃ warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average and 0.17℃ above 2016’s value.
