Scientists say the world must find rapid solutions as global temperatures are now on the brink of passing the crucial 1.5°C warming limit.
According to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first calendar year where the global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,
The limit set by the Paris Agreement refers to temperature anomalies averaged over at least 20 years. Though this has not been broken, experts warn that data, however, underscores that global temperatures are now rising beyond what modern humans have ever experienced before.
Last year brought many deadly extreme weather events around the world from severe storms to flooding, drought, heatwaves and wildfires. As these events become increasingly frequent and intense, people’s lives and livelihoods across the globe are threatened.
Each of the last 10 years – from 2015 to 2024 – was one of the 10 warmest on record, according to the EU climate monitoring service. Its 2024 Global Climate Highlights report outlines the exceptional conditions the world experienced last year.
A 2018 massive United Nations study found that keeping Earth’s temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius could save coral reefs from going extinct, keep massive ice sheet loss in Antarctica at bay and prevent many people’s death and suffering.
STORYLINE:
Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.
The United Nations World Meteorological Organisation will later on Friday confirm that 2024 was the hottest year on record, the agency’s spokesperson Clare Nullis told a news conference.
“We saw extraordinary land and sea surface temperatures, extraordinary ocean heat, accompanied by, as we all know, very extreme weather affecting many countries around the world, destroying lives, livelihoods, hopes and dreams,” Nullis said.
“It was an extraordinary year,” she added.
Last year’s global average temperature easily passed 2023’s record heat and kept pushing even higher.
It surpassed the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom’s Meteorology Office and Japan’s weather agency.
The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming.
Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in releases of data coordinated to early Friday morning European time.
American monitoring teams — NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth — were to release their figures later Friday but all will likely show record heat for 2024, European scientists said.
The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations that go back to 1850 — in different ways, which is why numbers vary slightly.
Last year eclipsed 2023’s temperature in the European database by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit).
That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree, scientists said.
By far the biggest contributor to record warming is the burning of fossil fuels, several scientists added.
STORYLINE:
Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major symbolic climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced.
Last year’s global average temperature easily passed 2023’s record heat and kept pushing even higher.
It surpassed the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom’s Meteorology Office and Japan’s weather agency.
The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in releases of data coordinated to early Friday morning European time.
American monitoring teams — NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth — were to release their figures later Friday but all will likely show record heat for 2024, European scientists said.
The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations that go back to 1850 — in different ways, which is why numbers vary slightly.
Last year eclipsed 2023’s temperature in the European database by an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree, scientists said.
The last 10 years are the 10 hottest on record and are likely the hottest in 125,000 years, according to Copernicus.
July 10 was the hottest day recorded by humans, with the globe averaging 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus found.
By far the biggest contributor to record warming is the burning of fossil fuels, several scientists said.
A temporary natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific added a small amount and an undersea volcanic eruption in 2022 ended up cooling the atmosphere because it put more reflecting particles in the atmosphere as well as water vapor, according to Copernicus.
This is the first time any year passed the 1.5-degree threshold, except for a 2023 measurement by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists who were skeptical of global warming.
Scientists were quick to point out that the 1.5 goal is for long-term warming, now defined as a 20-year average. Warming since pre-industrial times over the long term is now at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Celsius).
A 2018 massive United Nations study found that keeping Earth’s temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius could save coral reefs from going extinct, keep massive ice sheet loss in Antarctica at bay and prevent many people’s death and suffering.
European and British calculations figure with a cooling La Nina instead of last year’s warming El Nino, 2025 is likely to be not quite as hot as 2024.
They predict it will turn out to be the third-warmest. However, the first six days of January — despite frigid temperatures in the U.S. East — averaged slightly warmer and are the hottest start to a year yet, according to Copernicus data.
Source: Africanews
