Paris: Europe’s climate monitor stated on Monday that this year is “effectively certain” to be the warmest on record and the first to surpass a vital barrier to prevent the world from dangerously warming.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service’s new benchmark ends a year in which tragedies that scientists have linked to human activity’s part in Earth’s rapid warming hit both affluent and poor nations.
According to Copernicus, an unheard-before period of extreme heat caused average global temperatures to soar between January and November that this year would undoubtedly surpass 2023 as the warmest on record.
In its monthly briefing, the EU agency stated, “At this point, it is effectively certain that 2024 is going to be the warmest year on record.”
Climate-related calamities caused
$310 billion in economic losses this year.
Julien Nicolas, a Copernicus scientist, predicted that global temperatures would begin in 2025 “at near-record level” and might continue to do so for several months.
Another somber milestone is that 2024 will be the first year that temperatures are 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than they were prior to the industrial revolution, when people began using a lot of fossil fuels.
Copernicus said that the year-to-date temperature was over 1.6 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era, which was defined as the period between 1850 and 1900.
According to scientists, every degree of climate change increases the hazards, and a temperature increase of more than 1.5C over several decades would seriously endanger ecosystems and human cultures.
The world committed to attempting to limit warming to this safer 1.5C threshold as part of the Paris Climate Accord.
A year above 1.5C “does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever,” according to Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Devastating warming
The globe is far from on course. The UN warned in October that 3.1C of warming would be disastrous if climate policy continued in its current course.
Despite an international commitment to shift the world away from coal, oil, and gas, emissions from fossil fuels continue to rise.
Fossil fuel combustion releases greenhouse gases that increase global temperatures, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere and oceans. According to scientists, this warming effect alters the water cycle and climatic patterns, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
In 2024, South America had severe drought and wildfires, strong storms in the Philippines and the United States, and devastating flooding in Spain and Kenya.
According to Swiss Re, a major insurance company located in Zurich, disasters cost the economy $310 billion in 2024.
Developing nations are especially at risk, and by 2035, they will require $1.3 trillion annually in foreign aid to manage climate change and energy transitions. Large, historic polluters that are mostly to blame for global warming pledged to raise at least $300 billion a year by 2035 during UN climate talks in November, a pledge that was criticized as being woefully insufficient.
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