Ian Langsdon / EPA
The European Copernicus observatory announced this Monday that it is certain that 2024 will be the hottest year since records have been recorded. 2024 will also be the first year to exceed the warming limit set in 2015.
2024 had the hottest ever, the hottest ever and some of the hottest ever.
After the second hottest November on the planet’s surface, the European Copernicus observatory confirms: “it is indeed certain” that the average temperature throughout the year “will exceed the pre-industrial level by more than 1.5 °C”.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) in its monthly bulletin, November is the 16th of the last 17 months to record a temperature increase of at least 1.5°C compared to the period 1850-1900.
This symbolic barrier corresponds to the more ambitious limit of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aimed to contain global warming below 2°C and continue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
This agreement, however, refers to long-term trends. Average warming of 1.5°C must be observed for at least 20 years for the threshold to be formally exceeded.
Using this criterion, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the 1.5°C mark will likely be reached between 2030 and 2035.
This is regardless of the evolution of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are close to peaking but not yet declining.
In November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also warned that 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record, with the average global temperature near the surface even higher than in 2023.
The global temperature analysis from the WMO, a United Nations agency, covers the period January to September and draws on six international datasets to provide a consolidated temperature assessment.
The WMO study was delivered to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, before COP29, the UN climate change conference, held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
According to the latest UN calculations, the world is not on the right track to avoid a worsening of the droughts, heat waves or torrential rains already observed, which cost human lives and have an economic impact.
According to the Nations Environment Programme, the current policies of nations are moving the world towards a “catastrophic” warming of 3.1°C over the century, or 2.6°C, even if promises are kept.
After COP29, countries have until February to submit to the United Nations a review of their climate goals until 2035.
