EU climate monitor says 2024 will ‘certainly’ be hottest year on record | climate crisis news
The Copernicus Climate Change Service says that this year, 2023, will definitely be considered the hottest year ever.
Europe’s climate monitor says 2024 is “effectively certain” to be the hottest on record and the first year above the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) climate benchmark set to keep the Earth from dangerously overheating. There is an important limitation for.
An unprecedented period of extraordinary heat has pushed average global temperatures between January and November so high that this year, 2023, is on course to be the hottest ever, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Monday.
“At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the hottest year on record,” the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin.
Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations to aid its climate calculations.
Its records date back to 1940, but other sources of climate data – such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons – allow scientists to extend their findings using evidence from much further into the past.
Scientists say that the period currently passing is probably the hottest period the planet has seen in the last 125,000 years.
Last month ranked as the second warmest November on record, behind November 2023. Portugal experienced its warmest November ever, the country’s meteorological agency said on Thursday, with the average air temperature 2.69C (4.84F) higher than the 1981-2010 average. ,
Temperature rises above the critical 1.5C threshold
In another serious milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year that will be more than 1.5C warmer than pre-industrial times, before humanity began burning fossil fuels in large quantities.
Scientists have warned that warming of more than 1.5C over a decades-long period would put the planet at great risk, and the international community agreed under the Paris climate accord to try to limit warming to this safe limit.
Still, the world is nowhere on track to meet the 1.5C target. In October, the United Nations said the current direction of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C (5.6F) of warming.
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. Emissions from fossil fuels are rising despite global pledges to move the world away from coal, oil and gas.
Scientists say global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and brutal, and climate change is taking its toll even at current levels.
The year saw deadly floods in Spain and Kenya, violent tropical storms in the United States and the Philippines, and severe drought and wildfires across South America.
At UN climate talks in November, rich countries pledged $300 billion annually by 2035, an amount that was described as grossly inadequate.
