Global temperatures have, on average, exceeded a critical threshold for the first time over the past two years, reaching levels never experienced by modern humans, an EU agency reported on Friday. .
While this does not indicate that the internationally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming has been permanently breached, the Copernicus Climate Change Service warned that it is dangerously close to being exceeded.
EU monitors confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that has fueled climate extremes across continents.
2025 is not expected to be another record-breaking year, as climate skeptic Donald Trump takes office, and for nations to commit to deep cuts in rising levels of greenhouse gases. A deadline is running out.
But the UK’s Met Office predicts that 2025 will still be among the top three warmest years in the history books.
This extra heat supercharges extreme weather, and in 2024 countries from Spain to Kenya, the United States and Nepal were hit by disasters that some estimates cost more than $300 billion.
Los Angeles is battling wildfires that have destroyed thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands from their homes. US President Joe Biden said the fires in California were the most “catastrophic” and proof that “climate change is real”.
Copernicus said the sustained, unprecedented warming would make average temperatures between 2023 and 2024 more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.
In Paris in 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed that meeting 1.5°C offered the best chance of halting the most devastating effects of climate change.
But the world is nowhere near meeting that goal.
“We are now teetering on the brink of exceeding the 1.5°C threshold,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy climate director at Copernicus.
Climate extremes
Copernicus’ records go back to the 1940s, but other sources of climate data, such as ice cores and tree rings, allow scientists to say that today’s Earth is the warmest it has been in tens of thousands of years. is
The 1.5°C threshold is measured in decades, not individual years, but Copernicus said reaching that threshold also briefly illustrates the unprecedented changes humanity is making.
Scientists say that every fraction of a degree more than 1.5°C is consequential, and that beyond a certain point the climate could change in ways that are difficult to predict.
At current levels, human-driven climate change is already making droughts, storms, floods and heat waves more frequent and severe.
The death of 1,300 pilgrims from extreme heat in Saudi Arabia, a barrage of powerful tropical cyclones in Asia and North America, and historic floods in Europe and Africa marked the grim milestones in 2024.
The ocean, a key climate regulator that absorbs 90 percent of excess heat from greenhouse gases, is set to warm to record levels in 2024, stressing coral reefs and marine life and shaking them in violent weather.
Warmer oceans mean more evaporation and more moisture in the atmosphere, which leads to more rain, stronger storms, and sometimes unbearable humidity.
Burgess said atmospheric water vapor hit fresh highs in 2024 and combined with higher temperatures to cause flooding, heatwaves and “distress for millions of people”.
‘Strong Warning’
Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said a temperature hit of 1.5 degrees Celsius was a “strong warning sign”.
“We have now had our first taste of a 1.5°C world, causing unprecedented suffering and economic costs to people and the global economy,” he said. AFP.
Scientists say the onset of a warming El Nino phenomenon in 2023 contributed to the record warming that followed.
But El Niño ended in early 2024, and scientists have been puzzled as to why global temperatures have remained at or near record levels since then.
In December, the World Meteorological Organization said that if a La Niña adversary occurs in the coming months, it will be too “weak and short-lived” to have a more cooling effect.
“The future is in our hands – fast and decisive action can still change the trajectory of our future climate,” said Carlo Buontempo, climate director at Copernicus.
The United Nations agreed to a transition away from fossil fuels at a UN summit in 2023, but the latest meeting in November struggled to make any progress on how to tackle deep-seated warming emissions. Reduction should be brought.