Currently in Denver — November 1, 2023: Warmer, Still Chilly

The weather, currently.

Happy (late) Halloween! I forgot to say that for Tuesday’s forecast and was very sad when I realized. 🥲🎃

Anyways . . . things are warming up a wee bit! This Wednesday we’ll see a high around 57 degrees with partly sunny skies in the morning and mostly cloudy skies in the evening. The cloud coverage may clear up again as the night goes on, and temperatures will hit a low around 30.

Seems like our random wintry weather is dissipating as we head into some more cool fall days. I’m excited to have Autumn back, but I’ve also really been enjoying getting all cozy and warm with blankets and tea. Gotta make the most of what ya got!

— Julia Dinmore

What you need to know, currently.

The data are in, and October 2023 was the hottest October in history.

With a year so unusually warm as this, it’s sometimes easy to assume that scientists didn’t see it coming. That’s not quite true. In fact, global climate models created 10 years ago still are doing a great job of capturing how extreme this year is.

And it’s not just this year. In general, global temperatures in recent years have been tracking right along the middle of where scientists thought they’d be by now assuming emissions kept rising. (They have.) In fact, temperatures are not too far off from where scientists back in the 1980s thought they’d be right now, assuming a scenario of only limited climate action came true. (It has.)

So, we saw this coming. And we should have done more to stop it. And we know that ramped up action in the coming years will still work.

In the 35 years since the 1988 congressional testimony of NASA climate scientist James Hansen, humanity has now used effectively all of its atmospheric carbon budget for keeping global warming at or below 1.5°C since preindustrial levels. But it doesn’t have to go much further than that if we do what we know we need to do.

— Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

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