Paris France – The last three months have been the warmest ever recorded, and with February there are now nine consecutive monthly records, due to climate change and El Niño, according to figures published this Thursday, March 7, by the European Copernicus observatory.
First modification: Last modification:
4 min
The series of data from the European observatory's monthly newsletter are shocking.
The average temperature was 13.54° C in February, 1.77° C above an average February in the period 1850-1900.
This It also represents 0.12° C more than the previous record for a month of Februaryestablished in 2016.
For four days, from February 8 to 11, temperatures were even more than 2° C above pre-industrial times, although this does not necessarily mean that the upper limit of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change has been reached. which proposed an ideal objective of +1.5º C.
The average should be above that figure for several decades.
In the last 12 months, The world experienced a temperature 1.56° C higher than average throughout the 19th century.
February 2024 thus represents the ninth consecutive monthly record broken, notes Copernicus.
The meteorological winter in the northern hemisphere (December to February) is therefore the warmest on record in the world, succeeding the three warmest autumn and summer months.
Remarkable temperatures have been recorded all over the planet, from North America to Vietnam via Morocco and most of South America. But Europe stood out.
The European continent experienced an exceptionally warm winter, with temperatures 3.30° C above normal (1991-2020), and with an even more abnormal situation in Central and Eastern Europe.
The boy and the girl
The average temperature of the oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth, reached a monthly record with 21.06° C at the sea surface, excluding the areas near the poles from the calculation.
This warming directly threatens marine life and can reduce the absorption capacity of greenhouse gas emissions in the seas, which are carbon sinks and absorb 90% of excess energy from human activity.
The world has suffered in recent months from the impact of the natural climate phenomenon El Niño, leading to warmer temperatures.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), El Niño peaked in December but is still expected to bring above-normal temperatures into May on land.
The WMO indicates that there is a possibility that La Niña, which, unlike El Niño, causes a decrease in global temperatures, will develop “later this year” after neutral conditions between April and June.
“2024 was on track to be another very warm year, possibly a record year, but the chances of this could decrease if we are quickly heading towards a La Niña phenomenon,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service ( C3S), to AFP.
More records
In any case, these cyclical phenomena add up to a long-term trend that shows no signs of slowing down: warming due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
If these concentrations are not stabilized, “we will inevitably face other world temperature records and its consequences,” emphasized Carlo Buontempo.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 to maintain the 1.5° C limit established by the Paris Agreement.
Furthermore, global emissions must peak before 2025.
However, this does not appear to be happening: according to the latest data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 1.1% in 2023, reaching a record level.
#graphs #world #experiencing #consecutive #months #temperature #records