The last two years have exceeded on average the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming set by the Paris agreement, the European Copernicus observatory announced on Friday. They show a continuous and unprecedented rise in temperatures in modern history.
As expected for months, and now confirmed by all temperatures up to December 31, 2024 was indeed the hottest year ever recorded since statistics began in 1850, the climate change service confirmed ( C3S) of Copernicus.
2025 is not expected to be a record year, but the British Meteorological Office has warned that the year is expected to be one of the three hottest recorded on the planet. Countries are due to announce their new climate roadmaps this year, updated every five years as part of the Paris climate agreement.
The reduction of greenhouse gases is stalling in certain rich countries, notably in the United States, where Donald Trump is due to return to the presidency and where a drop of only -0.2% was recorded last year , according to an independent report.
Unpublished for 120,000 years
According to Copernicus, the year 2024 alone but also the average of the two years 2023-2024 exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to the pre-industrial era, before the massive use of coal, oil and gas fossil does not profoundly modify the climate. This does not mean, however, that the most ambitious limit of the Paris agreement – observed over at least 20 years – has been crossed, recalls Copernicus.
But ‘it underscores the fact that global temperatures are rising beyond what modern humans have experienced.’ Indeed, the current warming of the climate has not been seen for at least 120,000 years, according to scientists. This is a ‘serious warning’, judges Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
‘We have had a taste of a 1.5 degree world, with unprecedented suffering and economic costs for people and the global economy, due to human-enhanced extreme events like droughts, floods, fires and storms,’ he told AFP.
Overheating oceans
Economically, natural disasters caused $320 billion in losses worldwide last year, according to reinsurer Munich Re.
Containing warming to 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees – the upper limit of the Paris agreement – would significantly limit its most catastrophic consequences, according to the IPCC, the climate experts mandated by the UN.
-‘Every year of the last decade has been one of the ten hottest on record,’ warns Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S at Copernicus.
The oceans, which absorb 90% of the excess heat caused by humanity, also continued to overheat. The annual average of their surface temperatures – excluding polar zones – reached the unprecedented level of 20.87 degrees, beating the 2023 record.
In addition to the immediate impacts of marine heatwaves on corals or fish, this lasting overheating of the oceans, the main regulator of the earth’s climate, affects marine and atmospheric currents.
‘In our hands’
Warmer seas release more water vapor into the atmosphere, providing additional energy for typhoons, hurricanes or storms. Copernicus reports that the level of water vapor in the atmosphere has reached a record level in 2024, standing around 5% above the 1991-2020 average.
However, the past year saw the end of the natural El Niño phenomenon, which induces global warming and an increase in certain extreme events, and a transition towards neutral conditions or the opposite phenomenon, La Niña.
The World Meteorological Organization already warned in December that the latter would be ‘short and of low intensity’ and insufficient to offset the effects of warming.
‘The future is in our hands. Rapid and decisive action can still deviate the trajectory of our future climate, stresses the director of Copernicus’ climate change department, Carlo Buontempo.
/ATS
