Modeling 2020 regulatory changes in international shipping emissions helps explain anomalous 2023 warming

The summer of 2023 saw an anomalous increase in temperatures even when considering the ongoing greenhouse-gas-driven warming trend. Here we demonstrate that regulatory changes to sulfate emissions from international shipping routes, which resulted in a significant reduction in sulfate particulate released during international shipping starting on 1 January 2020, have been a major contributing factor to the monthly surface temperature anomalies during the last year. We do this by including the appropriate changes to emission databases developed for the Climate Model Intercomparison Project version 6 (CMIP6) in Community Earth System Model (CESM2) simulations. The aerosol termination effect simulated by the updated CESM2 simulations of  W m−2 and 0.08 K±0.03 K is consistent with observations of both radiative forcing and surface temperature, manifesting a similar delay as the one observed in observational datasets between the implementation of the emission changes and the anomalous increase in warming. Our findings highlight the importance of considering realistic near-future changes in short-lived climate forcers for future climate projections, such as for CMIP7, for an improved understanding and communication of short-term climatic changes.