The average annual temperature in 2024 will exceed for the first time in history 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level and will probably reach a value higher than 1.55°C, as announced 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 streak 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 hottest year on record and the first year more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the ERA5 dataset,” says Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of Copernicus. . “This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst for raising ambitions ahead of the next Climate Change Conference, COP29. »
Although the data covers the period from January to October of this year, Copernicus is able to assert these extremes because “the average temperature anomaly for the remainder of 2024 would need to fall to almost zero for 2024 not to be the hottest year.
Towards the limit set in Paris
The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to keep the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, between 2014 and 2033, and set the goal “to limit this increase in temperature to 1.5°C”. recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and effects of climate change.
Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insist in their latest reports on the fact 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 threshold of 1.5 ºC is exceeded in 2024 does not necessarily violate 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 of exceeding the limit and non-compliance with the agreement,” he explains to elDiario.es. In other words, the same thing may not happen again next year, but the trend indicates that the probability that the average will be exceeded in the 2030s, as the IPCC models predicted since the first reports, is very high .
Exceeding the threshold of 1.5ºC in 2024 does not violate the Paris Agreement, which has as reference the average of the period between 2014 and 2033, but we are on track.
Francisco Doblas
— ICREA Professor and climatologist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS)
For José Manuel Gutiérrez, director of the Cantabria Physics Institute (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 tells us that from this At that point, we began to break down that barrier. “It is no longer reasonable to think that the rest of the years will experience lower temperatures and that the trend will be upwards,” he emphasizes. “It could decrease in 2025, due to natural variability, but it is rare for a downward trend to continue in 2026. We are at a point where future years will likely be higher. As long as it increases, and we know that each decade it increases on average by 0.26 ºC, when we take the average from 2024 to 2034, we will no longer be talking about an increase of 1.5 ºC, but rather of 1.7ºC.
Even with current levels of global warming, remember World Meteorological Organization (WMO), devastating climate impacts are already occurring, including more extreme heatwaves, extreme precipitation and droughts, reductions in ice sheets, sea ice and glaciers, and accelerated elevation sea level and ocean warming.
The first cartridge we had, the 1.5ºC one, was wasted. The next one is 2ºC, and if we miss that, there is no more
Jose Manuel Gutiérrez
— Director of the Cantabria Institute of Physics (IFCA) and member of the IPCC
“The important message is that every tenth of a degree increase in global average temperature will take us beyond this threshold and we are already close to it,” summarizes Doblas. “People need to be aware that we are talking about things that are happening now and that the intensification of extreme phenomena that we are seeing – like what happened with DANA in Valencia – is partly due to climate change and the emissions caused by to human action, without a doubt.”
“Somehow we wasted the first cartridge we had, the 1.5°C one,” says Gutiérrez. “The next cartridge we have is the 2ºC one, and if we run out of that, it’s gone. The window we have left is getting narrower and narrower and soon there will be no room left for us to get out.”
You don’t have to throw in the towel
These negative data are known on the eve of COP29, the climate summit which begins next Monday in Baku (Azerbaijan) and a few hours after the election of Donald Trump for a second term as president of the United States. The Republican politician is a noted climate denier who officially withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement in 2020. If Trump follows suit, the absence of a country that caused 11 percent of all greenhouse gases on the planet will constitute a major obstacle to reversing the warming that seems to be leading us towards the worst climate scenarios.
Either way, 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 impacts increase with each increase in warming,” said Daniela Schmidt, professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol , addressing the SMC for a previous study in which the exceedance of this limit was 1.5°C. The limit has been evaluated. “Failing to achieve a goal should not mean that we give up hope, but rather that we need to step up our efforts. “This should not lead us to despair,” said 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 we abandon the rest of the day’s plans.”
