In 2024, the 1.5C warming limit will be exceeded for the first time https://ift.tt/iPCIZvB BBC The planet has taken a giant step towards warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, new data shows, despite world leaders trying to avoid it a decade ago. The European Copernicus Climate Service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, as well as the world’s hottest year on record. This does not mean that the international target of 1.5C has been breached, as it refers to the long-term average over decades, but it does bring us closer to it, as fossil fuel emissions warm the atmosphere. Last week, UN chief António Guterres called record temperatures “climate disruption”. “We must go down this path to destruction – and we have no time to lose,” he said in his New Year message, calling on countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. According to Copernicus, global average temperatures by 2024 were 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. Is it It broke the record set in 2023 It’s just over 0.1C, making the last 10 years the 10 warmest on record. The Met Office, NASA and other climate groups are due to release their data on Friday evening. Although the exact numbers vary slightly, everyone is expected to agree that 2024 was the warmest on record. Last year’s heat was largely due to human emissions of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide, which are still at record levels. Natural weather patterns such as El Niño, when tropical waters in the eastern Pacific become unusually warm, have played a lesser role. “The biggest contributor to our climate is the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess told the BBC. The 1.5C target has become a powerful symbol in international climate talks since it was agreed in Paris in 2015, with many vulnerable countries seeing it as a matter of survival. The risks from climate change, such as extreme heat waves, rising sea levels and the loss of wildlife, would be far greater at 2C warming than at 1.5C. Important UN report 2018. But the world is getting closer and closer to breaking the 1.5C barrier. “It is difficult to predict when we will pass the long-term threshold of 1.5 degrees, but we are now very close,” says Miles Allen, from Oxford University’s physics department and author of the UN report. The current trajectory is likely to see the world experience 1.5C of long-term warming in the early 2030s. That would be politically significant, but it doesn’t mean it’s game over for climate action. “1.49C is not good, and 1.51C is the apocalypse – every tenth of a degree we warm, the problems and climate impacts will get worse,” explains Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group. THE USA. A fraction of a degree of global warming could lead to more frequent and severe weather extremes, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall. The world saw it in 2024 Hot weather in West Africaextended Drought in parts of South Americaintensive Rain in Central Europe and some special ones strong tropical storms Hit North America and South Asia. These stories are just some of them exacerbated by climate change Last year, according to the World Weather Attribution Group. Even this week, when the new numbers were released, Los Angeles was plagued by devastating wildfires fueled by high winds and a lack of rain. Although many factors contributed to this week’s events, Experts say the conditions conducive to wildfires in California are intensifying in a warm world. In 2024, it is not only the air temperature that will set new benchmarks The global sea level also reached a new daily highand the total amount of moisture in the atmosphere reached a record level. No wonder the world is breaking new records: 2024 is expected to be the hottest year ever due to El Niño weather effects. ended last April – on top of human-caused warming. But the margins of several records in recent years have been less than expected, and some scientists fear that warming may be accelerating. “I think the temperatures in 2023 and 2024 surprised most climate scientists – we didn’t expect to see a year above 1.5 degrees so early,” Dr Hausfather said. Helge Gösling, a climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, said: “Since 2023, we’ve had 0.2C of warming in addition to what we expected from climate change and El Niño, which we can’t fully explain.” AFP The extreme temperatures during the Mediterranean heat wave that hit Morocco in July 2024 would have been “virtually impossible” without human-made climate change, according to the World Weather Attribution Group. Various theories have been proposed to explain this “extra” warming, such as low-level cloud cover tending to cool the planet and prolonged ocean warming after the end of El Niño. “The question is whether this acceleration is a permanent thing related to human activity, whether we will have a steep shift in the future, or whether this is part of natural variability,” adds Dr. Gösling. “It’s very hard to say right now.” Despite these uncertainties, scientists emphasize that humans still control the future climate and that drastic reductions in emissions can reduce the effects of warming. “Even with a window of 1.5 degrees, we can still limit warming to 1.6C, 1.7C or 1.8C this century,” Dr Hausfather said. “It’s much better than if we keep burning coal, oil and gas and get to 3C or 4C – it’s still significant.” #1.5C #warming #limit #exceeded #time https://ift.tt/YT3Q6Sj
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