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LiveScience
LiveScience
Sascha Pare

Tree rings reveal summer 2023 was the hottest in 2 millennia

Three women sit on a beach in Mumbai, India, holding a cloth over their heads to protect themselves from the scorching sun.

Last year's summer was the hottest in 2,000 years, ancient tree rings reveal.

Researchers already knew that 2023 was one for the books, with average temperatures soaring past anything recorded since 1850. But there are no measurements stretching further back than that date, and even the available data is patchy, according to a study published Tuesday (May 14) in the journal Nature. So, to determine whether 2023 was an exceptionally hot year relative to the millennia that preceded it, the study authors turned to records kept by nature.

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