File photo of a volunteer pouring water to cool a person during a hot day in Karachi, Pakistan. 2024 will be the first year 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era. Photo Credit: AP
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday (November 7, 2024) it is “almost certain” to eclipse 2023 as the world’s hottest year since records began. Data was released before next week UN COP29 climate summit in AzerbaijanWhere countries will try to agree on a huge increase in funding to tackle climate change. Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has reduced hopes for talks.
C3S said that from January to October, average global temperatures were so high that 2024 will almost certainly be the world’s hottest year ever – unless the temperature anomaly drops to near zero for the rest of the year.
“The root, the main reason for this year’s record is climate change,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.
“The climate in general is getting warmer. It’s getting warmer on all continents, in all ocean basins. So we’re bound to see those records broken,” he said.
Scientists said 2024 will also be the first year the planet will be more than 1.5C warmer than the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
Also read: Emphasis on methane diplomacy at COP29
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are the main cause of global warming.
Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at the public research university ETH Zurich, said she was not surprised by the milestone, and urged governments at COP29 to agree on stronger action to transition their economies away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels .
“The boundaries set in the Paris Agreement are beginning to collapse given the very slow pace of climate action around the world,” Ms Seneviratne said.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to try to limit global warming to more than 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid its worst consequences.
The world has not breached that target – which refers to an average global warming of 1.5C over decades – but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris target around 2030.
“It’s basically close now,” Mr. Buontempo said.
Every degree of temperature increase leads to more extreme weather conditions. In October, devastating floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record wildfires ravaged Peru, and floods in Bangladesh destroyed more than 1 million tons of rice, sending food prices skyrocketing. In the US, Hurricane Milton was also made worse due to human-caused climate change.
C3S records date back to 1940, cross-checked with global temperature records dating back to 1850.
published – November 07, 2024 09:32 am IST