In recent months, climatic disasters have relentlessly struck the planet, from floods in Valencia (Spain) to hurricanes in the United States, summoning a whole range of superlatives: “extraordinary”, “dantesque”, “monstrous”… We will have to add two records to the table of an exceptional year in terms of climate: 2024 is on track to be the hottest ever observed, ahead of 2023, and it will be the first for which warming exceeds the pre-industrial period by 1.5°C. So that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) sounds “maximum alert in the face of the frenetic pace of climate change”, in its provisional report on the state of the climate in 2024 published Monday November 11.
Between January and September 2024, the average temperature on the surface of the globe exceeded the pre-industrial average by 1.54°C, according to the UN body, which synthesizes six international data sets (the European Copernicus Institute, NASA, etc. .) and whose estimates will be confirmed in January 2025. For sixteen consecutive months (from June 2023 to September 2024), the global average temperature broke all previous records, and often from afar. The last ten years have also been the hottest on record. “2024 marks a historic turning point. We are on the strong and expected trend of climate change”reacts climatologist Christophe Cassou.
Such a surge in temperature is due to greenhouse gas emissions linked to human activities, in particular the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), to which was added an El Niño episode. This natural phenomenon associated with a warming of the equatorial Pacific, which took place between June 2023 and June 2024, pulled the global thermometer upwards and fueled numerous extreme events.
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“While monthly and annual warming temporarily exceeds the 1.5°C target, this does not mean that we have failed to achieve the Paris Agreement target, it is important to do so emphasize »said Celeste Saulo, WMO Secretary-General, in a statement.
“Climatic tipping points”
The most ambitious objective of the international treaty, which also aims to keep the global temperature well below 2°C, is understood over a long period of around twenty years, and not for one or more individual years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers that this threshold will be crossed sustainably in the early 2030s. “The ambitions of the Paris agreement are in great danger”warns the WMO.
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