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12-11-2024
BAKU: Scientists say 2024 it is on track to become the hottest year on record.
In its latest State of the Climate report, released on the first day of the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, the World Meteorological Organization paints a sobering picture.
The report shows 2015-2024 to be the warmest decade since records began. For 16 consecutive months (June 2023 to September 2024), “the global mean temperature likely exceeded anything recorded before, and often by a wide margin,” the study found.
In addition, between January and September 2024, the average global air temperature was 1.54 degrees Celsius (2.77 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average.
This rise means the past months have seen the world temporarily surpass a critical threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement.
The goal of the Paris Agreement, as agreed by almost every country in the world at the COP21 climate summit in 2015, is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to strive for 1.5.
Scientists have long warned that crossing that lower threshold is a physical limit beyond which Earth enters a danger zone where climate tipping points can create further warming.
A separate report published this month by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also concluded that the annual temperature for this year would likely be more than 1.5 degrees. “It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo.
The WMO report said that for now, the passing of the 1.5 threshold is temporary and does not mean a failure to meet the Paris Agreement goal. The long-term global temperature increase is estimated at around 1.3 degrees Celsius.
“Recorded global temperature anomalies at daily, monthly and annual timescales are prone to large variations, partly because of natural phenomenon such as El Nino and La Nina,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “They should not be equated to the long-term temperature goal set in the Paris Agreement.”
The WMO report underscores the urgency of addressing climate change before crossing the 1.5 mark for good and warns that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Even seemingly minimal temperature rise can exacerbate climate extremes, heightening the potential for heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires, which are already causing catastrophic losses around the world.
2023 already showed the highest observed levels of greenhouse gas emissions on record and real time data indicates they continued to rise in 2024. The volume of heat-trapping carbon dioxide increased by 51% between 1750 and 2023, according to the WMO report, pushing up temperatures.
This is clearly visible in the world’s oceans, which absorb about 90% of the excess heat from global warming. They reached record heat in 2023 already, and preliminary data for 2024 shows a continuation of that trend.
This oceanic heat content is irreversible. It will persist over the course of centuries or even millennia and its long-term effects will be felt for generations to come, the report says.
Simultaneously, glaciers around the world are losing ice at an accelerating rate.
In 2023 alone, glaciers receded more quickly than at any other point since records began 70 years ago losing the equivalent of five times the volume of water held in the Dead Sea. The loss is attributed to extreme melting in North America and Europe. (Int’l News Desk)
