Commentary to "Recent global temperature surge intensified by record low planetary albedo" by Goessling et al.

A recent study by Goessling et al. (2024) published in the journal Science attributed the 2023 record heat anomaly primarily to anthropogenic forcing (~78.6%) while ascribing only ~21.4% of the temperature rise to natural drivers such as the observed decrease of planetary albedo by the CERES project and the onset of El Niño. The study also asserted that the Earth’s Energy Imbalance was a result of heat trapping by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases and that Earth’s climate sensitivity may be near the upper range of current estimates, thus bringing us closer to the temperature targets in the Paris Agreement than previously thought. We show that these assessments are based on methodological errors, incorrect interpretation of satellite data, and improper accounting for the available evidence. The CERES satellite data show that the 2023 global heat anomaly was entirely caused by a decrease of Earth's albedo mostly due to a reduction of low-level clouds over the oceans.