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The world surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius in temperature rise last year for the first time, major international agencies said, as an “extraordinary” rise in the global average temperature sparked fears that climate change is accelerating faster than expected.
The European monitoring agency Copernicus confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with average surface temperatures reaching 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels after greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high.
This was the first calendar year in which average temperatures exceeded the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise since pre-industrial times to less than 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Honestly, I no longer have any metaphors to explain the warming we are seeing,” said Carlo Bontempo, director of Copernicus.
He added that last year's wave of climate disasters – which ranged from floods to heatwaves – was not a statistical anomaly, but clearly linked to climate change caused by rising carbon dioxide and methane.
Copernicus said that the years from 2015 to 2024 were the ten hottest years on record.
The coordinated release of 2024 data from six climate monitoring organizations comes just days before President-elect Donald Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement to address climate change.
Some companies around the world have also begun to weaken climate goals and back away from green efforts.
“Reaching 1.5°C is like watching the first domino fall in a destructive chain reaction,” said Patrick McGuire, a climate researcher at the University of Reading. “We are playing with fire. Every fraction of a degree unleashes more intense storms, longer droughts, and deadlier heat waves.
The latest data does not represent a final violation of the Paris Agreement, whose goals refer to average temperatures measured over more than two decades.
But concerns about the pace of climate change have been heightened by evidence that the world's oceans have been slower to cool than expected after the impact of the warming El Niño phenomenon on the Pacific Ocean.
Tim Lenton, head of the Department of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter, added: “What is most surprising is how warm temperatures will be in 2024 and most of 2023.”
“This is a clear signal of climate destabilization – a less stable system experiences greater and more persistent fluctuations.”
Copernicus said human-induced climate change was the main driver of extreme air and sea surface temperatures in 2024, while other factors such as El Niño, which officially ended last June, also contributed.
This year is expected to be colder than 2024, partly due to the declining influence of the periodic El Niño phenomenon. beginning a Weak La Niña cooling cycle The US Weather Agency confirmed on Thursday.
But Samantha Burgess, of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said it was likely to remain among the top three hottest temperatures ever recorded.
“We now live in a completely different climate than our parents and grandparents lived,” she said, adding that it may have been 125,000 years since temperatures were as hot as they are today.
Copernicus said 2024 was the warmest year on the books for all continental regions, except Antarctica and Australia, as well as for “large parts” of the world's oceans, especially the North Atlantic, Indian Ocean and western Pacific.
In 2024, global atmospheric water levels will reach record levels, 5 percent above the 1991-2020 average, leading to “unprecedented heatwaves and extreme rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people,” Burgess said. .
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