The average annual temperature in 2024 will exceed 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for the first time in history and will probably reach a value of more than 1.55 °C, as announced this Thursday by the Climate Change Service. of Copernicus (C3S). The data indicates that the temperature in October 2024 was 1.65 °C above the pre-industrial level, completing a series of 16 consecutive months in which the global average surface air temperature exceeds 1.5 °C .
“After 10 months, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first year with more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, according to the ERA5 data set,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus. “This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to increase ambition ahead of the next Climate Change Conference, COP29.”
Although the data is from January to October of this year, Copernicus is in a position to affirm these extremes because “the average temperature anomaly for the rest of 2024 would have to fall to almost zero for 2024 to not be the warmest year.”
Towards the limit set in Paris
The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to keep the increase in global average temperature well below 2 °C with respect to pre-industrial levels, in the period between 2014 and 2033, and set the objective “to limit this increase in temperature to 1.5°C, recognizing that this would considerably reduce the risks and effects of climate change.”
The experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insist in their latest reports that above 1.5 °C adaptation will be more difficult, as well as the “negative impacts on the intensity and frequency of extreme phenomena, on resources , ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, cities, tourism and carbon removal.”
A suicidal escalation
Francisco Doblas, ICREA professor and climatologist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), whose team had already predicted that this average temperature would be exceeded in 2024, recalls that the fact that the 1.5 ºC threshold is exceeded in 2024 does not violate necessarily the Paris Agreement, which has as a reference the average of the 20-year period between 2014 and 2033. “Which means that we are on the path to exceeding the limit and failing to comply with the agreement,” he explains to elDiario.es. That is, the same thing may not happen next year again, but the trend indicates that the probability of the average being exceeded in the 2030s, as the IPCC models predicted since the first reports, is very high.
Exceeding the 1.5 ºC threshold in 2024 does not violate the Paris Agreement, which has as a reference the average of the period between 2014 and 2033, but we are on our way there
Francisco Doblas
— ICREA professor and climatologist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS)
For José Manuel Gutiérrez, director of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA) and member of the IPCC, the fact that in one year the global average temperature will already reach the ceiling and exceed 1.5 ºC gives us an indication that from then on We have begun to break that barrier. “It is no longer reasonable to think that the rest of the years will have lower temperatures and the trend will be increasing,” he points out. “It may drop in 2025, due to natural variability, but it is rare for 2026 to maintain a downward trend. We are at a point from which the coming years are more likely to be above. As long as it rises, and we know that each decade it increases an average of 0.26 ºC, when we take the average from 2024 to 2034 we will no longer be talking about a 1.5 ºC rise, but rather 1.7 ºC.
Even with current levels of global warming, remember the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), devastating climate impacts are already occurring, including more extreme heat waves, extreme precipitation events and droughts, reductions in ice sheets, sea ice and glaciers, and an acceleration of sea level rise and of ocean warming.
The first cartridge we had, which was the 1.5 ºC one, we wasted. The next one is the 2 ºC, and if we run out of that there is no more
Jose Manuel Gutierrez
— Director of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA) and member of the IPCC
“The important message is that every tenth of a degree that the global average temperature rises will lead us to exceed this threshold and we are already close to it,” summarizes Doblas. “People must be aware that we are talking about things that are happening now and that the intensification of the extreme phenomena that we are seeing – such as what happened with DANA in Valencia – are due in part to climate change and emissions due to the action human, without any doubt.”
“One way or another, we have wasted the first cartridge we had, which was the 1.5ºC one,” says Gutiérrez. “The next cartridge we have is the 2 ºC one, and if we run out of that there is no more. The window we have left is increasingly narrower and soon there will be no room left for us to get out.”
You don’t have to throw in the towel
This negative data is known on the eve of COP29, the climate summit that begins next Monday in Baku (Azerbaijan) and hours after the election of Donald Trump for a second term as president of the United States. The Republican politician is a renowned climate denier who officially pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2020. If Trump takes the same path again, the absence of a country that is the source of 11 percent of all greenhouse gases in the world planet will be a huge obstacle to reversing the warming that seems to lead us towards the worst climate scenarios.
In any case, being on the negative path should not lead us to inaction, experts warn. “While the Paris Agreement largely focused on 1.5°C, we know that the impacts increase with each increase in warming,” said Daniela Schmidt, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, speaking to SMC for a previous study in which exceeding this limit was assessed. “Failing to achieve a goal should not mean that we lose all hope, but rather that we must increase our efforts.” “It should not lead us to despair,” stressed Duo Chan, a climatologist at the University of Southampton. “Just like in our daily lives, where an unfulfilled goal in our agenda does not mean that we abandon the rest of the day’s plans.”
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