Climate scientists say that global warming generates extreme weather conditions such as storms, floods, and heat waves, making these disasters more frequent and intense (LUIS TATO)
LUIS TATO/AFP/AFP PHOTO
By AFP - Agence France Presse
2024 “certain” to be the hottest year on record: EU monitor
Nick PERRY and Benjamin, LEGENDRE
Europe's climate monitor said on Monday that this year is “effectively certain” to be the hottest ever recorded and the first above a critical threshold to protect the planet from dangerous overheating.
The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which rich and poor countries have been hit by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity's role in the Earth's rapid warming.
Copernicus said an unprecedented period of extraordinary heat raised global average temperatures so much between January and November that this year will surely eclipse 2023 as the hottest yet.
“By now, it is effectively certain that 2024 will be the hottest year on record,” the EU agency said in its monthly bulletin.
In another grim milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial period, before humanity started burning large volumes of fossil fuels.
Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5ºC over decades would put the planet in great danger, and the world has agreed, within the framework of the Paris Climate Agreement, to strive to limit warming to this safer limit.
The deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess, said that a single year above 1.5ºC “does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been violated, but it does mean that ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.”
- Cost of inaction - The world is nowhere near being on track to meet the 1.5C target.
The world is nowhere near reaching the 1.5C target.
In October, the UN stated that the current course of climate action would result in catastrophic warming of 3.1ºC.
Emissions from fossil fuels continue to rise despite a global commitment to move the world away from coal, oil, and gas.
When burned, fossil fuels release greenhouse gases that heat the Earth's oceans and atmosphere, altering weather patterns and the water cycle.
Scientists say that global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and ferocious, and even at current levels, climate change is taking its toll.
In 2024, there were deadly floods in Spain and Kenya, violent tropical storms in the United States and the Philippines, and severe droughts and forest fires across South America.
In total, the disasters caused economic losses of $310 billion in 2024, Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re said this month.
Developing countries are particularly vulnerable and, by 2035, will need $1.3 trillion a year in foreign assistance to cope with climate change.
At the UN climate talks in November, rich countries pledged $300 billion a year by 2035, a figure that is considered grossly inadequate.
- 'Exceptional' - Copernicus
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 conclusions using evidence from a much more distant past.
Scientists say that the period being experienced now is probably the hottest the Earth has experienced in the last 125,000 years.
Even by these standards, the extraordinary heat observed since mid-2023 has sparked scientific debate.
The year 2024 began at the height of El Nino, a natural phenomenon that moves warm water around, helping to raise global temperatures.
However, scientists said that this cyclical variability alone could not explain the record heat in the atmosphere and seas.
After the last El Niño, temperatures were starting to fall, but “very slowly, and the causes will have to be analyzed,” Robert Vautard, a scientist at the IPCC, the UN's expert advisory body on climate, told AFP.
Last week, a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science suggested that the lack of low clouds could be causing less heat to return to space.
Another article, published in May, explored the possibility that cleaner-burning shipping fuels were releasing fewer mirror particles into the clouds, decreasing their reflectivity.
Copernicus climate scientist Julien Nicolas said that the last few years had been “clearly exceptional.”
“As we get more data, we hope to better understand what happened,” he told AFP.
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