World breaches 1.5C global warming target for first time in 2024

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The world warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time last year, top international agencies said, as an “extraordinary” rise in global average temperatures fueled fears that climate change is accelerating faster than expected.

Europe’s Copernicus observation agency confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with average temperatures 1.6C above pre-industrial levels after a new peak in greenhouse gas emissions.

It was the first calendar year in which average temperatures exceeded the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to below 2C from pre-industrial times and preferably to 1.5C.

“Frankly, I’m running out of metaphors to explain the warming we’re seeing,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

He added that last year’s spate of climate disasters, from floods to heatwaves, was not a statistical anomaly but clearly linked to climate change driven by rising carbon dioxide and methane.

Copernicus said the years 2015 to 2024 were the 10 warmest years on record.

The agreed release of 2024 data by six climate monitoring organizations comes days before President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.

Some businesses around the world have also begun to loosen climate targets and push back on green efforts.

“Hitting 1.5C is like the first domino falling in a devastating chain reaction,” said Patrick McGuire, a climate researcher at the University of Reading. Every fraction of a degree causes more intense storms, longer droughts and deadly heat.”

The latest data does not represent a final breach of the Paris Agreement, whose targets refer to temperature averages measured over more than two decades.

But concerns that climate change has accelerated have been fueled by evidence that the world’s oceans are cooling more slowly than expected following the natural El Niño warming effect on the Pacific Ocean.

“What’s most striking is how much warmer 2024 and much of 2023 was,” added Tim Lenton, head of the Department of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter.

“This is a clear signal of climate destabilization. a less stable system undergoes greater and more persistent fluctuations.

Human-induced climate change was the main driver of extreme air and sea surface temperatures in 2024, Copernicus said, while other factors such as El Niño, which officially ended last June, also contributed.

This year is expected to be cooler than 2024, in part due to the reduced influence of El Niño, which is cyclical a weak La Niña cooling cycle the US Meteorological Agency confirmed on Thursday.

But Samantha Burgess at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said it would still rank among the three hottest on record.

“We live in a very different climate now than our parents and grandparents lived in,” he said, adding that it’s probably been 125,000 years since temperatures have been as warm as they are today.

Copernicus said 2024 was the warmest year on books for all continental regions except Antarctica and Australia, as well as “significant parts” of the world’s oceans, particularly the North Atlantic, Indian and western Pacific oceans.

Global atmospheric water levels in 2024 are set to reach a record 5 percent above the 1991-2020 average, causing “unprecedented heat and heavy rains that are causing misery for millions of people,” Burgess said.

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