Even hotter than the record of 2023: it is now certain that 2024 will be the first year beyond the bar of 1.5 ° C of warming compared to the pre-industrial period, the long-term limit set by the agreement of Paris.
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After the second warmest November in the world, “it is indeed certain that 2024 will be the hottest year recorded and will exceed the pre-industrial level by more than 1.5°C”, announced the Climate Change Service on Monday (C3S) of the European Copernicus Observatory.
November, which was marked by a succession of devastating typhoons in Asia and the continuation of historic droughts in southern Africa and the Amazon, was 1.62°C warmer than a normal November at the time when the Humanity was not burning oil, gas or coal on an industrial scale.
November is the 16the over the last 17 months to record an anomaly of 1.5°C compared to the period 1850-1900, according to the Copernicus ERA5 database.
This symbolic bar corresponds to the most ambitious limit of the 2015 Paris agreement, aiming to contain warming well below 2°C and to continue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
This agreement, however, refers to long-term trends: the average warming of 1.5°C must be observed over at least 20 years to consider the limit crossed.
Using this criterion, the climate is currently warmed by about 1.3°C; the IPCC estimates that the 1.5°C mark will probably be reached between 2030 and 2035. And this, whatever the evolution of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, close to the peak, but not yet in decline.
310 billion dollars in damage
According to the latest UN calculations, the world is not at all on track to reduce its carbon pollution to avoid a very serious worsening of droughts, heatwaves or torrential rains already observed, costly in human lives and in economic impacts.
Nations’ current policies are taking the world towards a “catastrophic” warming of 3.1°C this century, or 2.6°C if promises to do better are kept, according to the UN Environment.
Countries have until February to submit to the United Nations the revision of their climate targets by 2035, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDC).
But the minimum agreement at COP29 at the end of November risks being invoked to justify weak ambitions. Developing countries have obtained $300 billion in annual aid pledges from rich countries by 2035, less than half of their request to finance their energy transition and their adaptation to climate damage.
The Baku summit also concluded without an explicit commitment to accelerate the “transition” towards the exit from fossil fuels, approved at COP28 in Dubai.
In 2024, natural disasters, fueled by warming, will cause economic losses of $310 billion worldwide, Swiss Re, the Swiss group which acts as an insurer for insurers, estimated on Thursday.
Rcloud reduction?
By 2023, the natural El Niño phenomenon had combined with human-caused global warming to push global temperatures to a record high. How then can we explain the new peak in 2024?
The year following El Niño “is frequently warmer than the first” and after a peak around December-January, “the heat is distributed throughout the year,” replies climatologist Robert Vautard, contacted by AFP .
But in 2024, “it is true that cooling is very slow and the causes will have to be analyzed,” he adds.
“For the moment, we remain within the relatively expected margins” of the projections, but if “temperatures do not drop more clearly in 2025, we will have to ask ourselves questions,” he says, before flying off for a session of work of the IPCC in Kuala Lumpur.
A study published in Science Thursday argues that in 2023, Earth has returned less solar energy to space due to a reduction in low-altitude clouds and, to a lesser extent, a decrease in sea ice.
In Antarctica, this has remained at historically low levels continuously since 2023, notes Copernicus, with a new melting record for the month of November.
