Climate change made 2023 a record year. This year will almost certainly be the warmest on record, according to the EU's Copernicus climate change service. In November, the Earth briefly crossed the 2°C global warming threshold for the first time. While temperatures need to be higher for a longer period of time to officially exceed the 1.5°C limit set in the Paris Agreement, it remains a worrying milestone to reach. This summer, extreme heat and dry weather in Europe sent hundreds of firefighters to battle wildfires in Greece. A blaze raged on the island of Rhodes for days, forcing holidaymakers and locals to flee. The forest fires in Greece were finally declared the largest ever to occur in the EU, burning an area of around 190,200 hectares and releasing the same amount of CO2 as 500,000 kg of coal. (Milos Schmidt)