From record high temperatures to wildfires, 2023 was marked by extreme weather. Spectrum News 1 meteorologist Greg Pollak says the year didn’t just shatter records, it changed the scales.

"The significance of the the world being actually two degrees warmer than the previous winter is because of manmade greenhouse gases and that's been a problem for the past at least 100 years, ever since the Industrial Revolution, actually and it's it's only going to get worse if things aren't done in a significant way," said Pollak.

So what can we expect moving forward?

"We're headed towards the the warmest winter on record in Albany, and that is significant because we we just had the warmest winter eight years ago in 2016," said Pollak. "Ski resorts [are] not seeing as much snow. [It's] definitely hurting their bottom line, seeing more extreme weather events, more flooding situations."

Paul Roundy is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University at Albany and studies how the weather and the climate interact. He says while the upward trend caused by climate change will continue, it’s complicated and 2024 probably won't beat 2023's heat records.

"We can think about a long term temperature trend going steady upward," said Roundy. "But nature is imposing warmer conditions and cooler conditions on top of that trend. And so what it leads to is some years that are very warm and then some years that are below the trend, a little cooler and going up and up and up overall. So that that's why we can have one year that's warmer than the previous year, but then the next year might be a little cooler than that year but the average temperature over many years continues to rise."

While we may not notice a shortage of our favorite foods in American grocery stores, globally, there's potential for major impact on agriculture.

"What we can all do is help to improve education, help people understand not only what the climate is doing, but how to make the world a better place to produce food more effectively and to get that food to the people who need it," said Roundy.

Pollak says this is the moment to act as, in a matter of a few years, it could be too late to create change, and he adds small changes can make a big impact.

"Turn the light off when you can when you when you leave a room," said Pollak. "Just try to conserve energy as much as possible. And that's really the bottom line in terms of trying to get ourselves to the next level. It's like, say everybody did that. Say every single person in the whole country actually conserve energy and turn the light off and tried to drive a hybrid car or electric car. That's it. We're good to go."