To say that 2023 is one for the record books is a huge understatement – the year was so out of the ordinary that you have to go back at least 125,000 years to take it as a point of reference. The last time anyone experienced a year as warm as this was, mastodons and giant sloths roamed North America at the start of the late Pleistocene. Suffice it to say, there weren’t many people around to experience it. In 2023, it seemed like Earth might be running out of records to break. In early July, the planet broke its all-time temperature record four times, one day after the other. It had its hottest week on record during what became the hottest summer on record. Then September broke its previous monthly temperature record by half a degree Celsius – a mark so staggering that Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist, declared it “absolutely mind-blowing bananas.” (Kate Yoder)