Even warmer than record year 2023: There is no longer any doubt that 2024 will be the warmest year on record, and the first to exceed the 1,5°C limit on temperature rise in comparison with the pre-industrial era, defined in the Paris Agreement, emphasizes the European Copernicus Observatory.
After the second warmest November on the planet's surface in history, "2024 is virtually certain to be the warmest year on record" as the average temperature "will surpass" the 1,5°C mark compared to the pre-industrial era, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) points out in its monthly bulletin.
November, marked by a series of devastating typhoons in Asia and the continuation of historic droughts in southern Africa and the Amazon region, was 1,62°C warmer than any normal November in the era when humanity was not burning oil, gas or coal on an industrial scale.
November was the 16th of the last 17 months to record an anomaly of 1,5°C compared to the 1850-1900 period, according to the Copernicus ERA5 database.
This symbolic limit corresponds to the most ambitious limit of the Paris Agreement (2015) to limit the increase in the temperature of the planet below 2° Celsius and to continue efforts to stay as possible to 1,5° Celsius.
This agreement, however, refers to long-term trends. The average increase in this temperature must be observed for at least 20 years for it to be considered that the limit has been exceeded.
Based on this criterion, climate warming during this period is approximately 1,3°C. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (GIEC) estimates that the 1,5°C barrier will likely be exceeded between 2030 and 2035.
This will depend on the evolution of human greenhouse gas emissions, which are close to peaking but showing no sign of abating.
According to the latest UN estimates, the world is not on track to reduce carbon dioxide pollution enough to avoid worsening droughts, heatwaves or torrential rains that cost lives and the economy.
Current government policies are driving the world towards a "catastrophic" increase in global temperatures of +3,1°C within the century, in other words 2,6°C above promises, according to the UN Environment agency .
Governments have until February to submit their revised 2035 climate goals, known as nationally determined contributions, to the United Nations.
But the a minima agreement at COP29 at the end of November risks being used to justify low-level commitments. Developing countries secured pledges of $300 billion in aid. dollars annually from rich countries until 2035, in other words less than half of what they were asking to finance their energy transition and to deal with the damage they are suffering due to climate change.
Besides, the Baku meeting was concluded without an explicit commitment to speed up the "transition", the path to abandoning fossil fuels, although exactly this commitment was made in Dubai, at COP28.
In 2024, so-called natural disasters, boosted by global warming, caused losses of 310 billion. dollars on an international scale, reinsurance group Swiss Re estimated on Thursday.
In 2023, the natural phenomenon El Niño combined with human-induced global warming to push global temperatures to a record high. So how is the new peak of 2024 explained?
The year following El Niño "is often warmer than the previous one" and after peaking in the December-January period, the heat is distributed "throughout the year", is the answer given by climatologist Robert Vautard.
In 2024, "it is true that the decrease in temperature was very slow and the causes must be analyzed", he added.
"For now, it remains within the relatively expected range" of projections, but if "temperatures don't drop again, more, in 2025, we have to ask questions," he added, before traveling to a GIEC working meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
A study published in the journal Science last week suggests that in 2023, Earth will reflect less solar energy into space due to a reduction in low-altitude clouds and, to a lesser extent, a reduction in floating ice floes.
In Antarctica, floating ice sheets remained at historic lows, a trend that continues through 2023, according to Copernicus data, while a new record ice melt was recorded in November.
Source: protothema.gr
