SINGAPORE: 2023 was Singapore’s joint fourth-warmest year since records started in 1929, with sweltering temperatures logged in May and October breaking records for those months.

The Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) said on Jan 22 that 2023 also ranked the seventh-wettest here in more than 40 years, with annual rainfall being 13.1 percent above the long-term average, or the average over 30 years.

Meanwhile, the annual average temperature in 2023 at the Changi climate station was 28.2 °C, tying with 1997 and 2015.

This fell behind the warmest years of 2019 and 2016 at 28.4 °C, followed by 1998 at 28.3 °C.

At the climate station, the last nine months of the year clocked above-average temperatures, said the weatherman.

Nearly 20 temperature-related records in Singapore were matched or broken. This included the highest daily temperature of 37 °C recorded on May 13, 2023, in Ang Mo Kio, which tied with that recorded in Tengah in 1983.

With a mean temperature of 29.5 °C, May 2023 matched March 1998 for the warmest month on record.

October 2023 was also exceptionally warm, with the month’s average temperature at 29 °C, topping the previous record for October in 2002 by 0.3 °C.

Its record also exceeded the long-term average for October by a “wide margin” of 1.1 °C, said MSS.

Climate conditions in 2023 induced 37 days of high heat stress, which puts people at greater risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Such weather was felt on up to eight days each year between 2018 and 2022.

Despite the higher temperatures, the island also experienced cooler-than-normal temperatures in the first three months of 2023, with March that year being the coolest March in the last decade.

The extremities in temperature here were influenced by weakening La Niña conditions, which typically brings wetter and colder conditions to Southeast Asia, in early 2023, said the weatherman.

The average rainfall for February 2023 was more than twice the average rainfall for that month between 1991 and 2020.

The daily total rainfall of 225.5 mm recorded at Kallang on Feb 28, 2023, broke the previous record of 159.3 mm for the wettest February day by a wide margin.

The wet weather was followed by El Niño conditions, which usually result in drier and hotter conditions in the region, during the second half of that year, MSS said.

Although 2023 was generally wet, there were months with unusually low rainfall – April, May, August, and October.

These months turned out to be in the top 10 driest for their respective months since 1980, said the weatherman.

The MSS report follows recent confirmation from climate scientists that 2023 was the warmest for the planet, after global temperature records started getting smashed from the middle of the year.

Averaged across that year, temperatures across the globe were 1.48 °C higher than they were in the second half of the 19th century, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced in December.

The unabated rise in greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño were the main long-term drivers for the increase, climate scientists said.

The searing heat bore down in heat waves in parts of North America, Europe and China.

Canada felt its most destructive wildfire season recorded by far, with more than 18.2 million ha burned, The New York Times reported.

Daily average temperatures in Singapore are set to soar further, with the National Environment Agency’s latest climate change study anticipating that the temperature could climb by up to 5 °C by the end of the century.