The last two years have exceeded on average the limit of 1.5°C of warming set by the Paris agreement, a sign of a continuous rise in temperatures unprecedented in modern history, the European Copernicus observatory announced on Friday. .
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 shaping up to be a record, but the British Meteorological Office has warned that the year should be one of the three hottest recorded on the planet. In 2025, the year marked by the return to power of Donald Trump in the United States, countries must also announce their new climate roadmaps, updated every five years as part of the Paris agreement. But the reduction of greenhouse gases is stalling in some rich countries: only -0.2% in the United States last year, according to an independent report.
According to Copernicus, the year 2024 alone, but also the average of the two years 2023-2024, exceeded 1.5°C 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 excess “should alarm us all”, reacted on Friday the British Minister responsible for Carbon Neutrality, Ed Miliband, referring to an “existential threat”.
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°C 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. Behind these figures are already hidden a series of disasters exacerbated by climate change: 1,300 deaths in June during extreme heat during the pilgrimage to Mecca, historic floods in West and Central Africa, violent hurricanes in the United States and the Caribbean…
And today, the Los Angeles fires, “the most devastating” in California history, in the words of President Joe Biden. Economically, natural disasters caused $320 billion in losses worldwide last year, according to reinsurer Munich Re.
