COP29: climate objectives of the Paris agreement in great danger

The ambitions of the Paris agreement are “in great danger”, the UN warned on Monday, at the opening of the UN climate conference in Baku (COP29). This while 2024 is almost guaranteed to become the hottest year on record.

The years 2015-2024 will also form the hottest decade ever measured, according to this report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency, which consolidates six major international databases.

“The record rainfall and floods, rapid intensification of tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought and catastrophic fires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a taste of the future », Underlines WMO Secretary General, Celeste Saulo, in a press release.

October set to break a new record

The European Copernicus service, one of the WMO’s sources, has already calculated the global average temperatures for the month of October, so hot that it is almost certain that 2024 will beat the annual record set only last year.

Over the period January-September, according to data consolidated by the WMO, the average air temperature on the earth’s surface was 1.54°C higher than the reference period, 1850-1900.

The Paris Agreement, adopted by countries around the world in 2015, aims to contain global warming to 2°C, and to continue efforts to contain it to 1.5°C.

“Every fraction of a degree counts”

Has this last, more ambitious objective now been missed? No, according to the WMO, because for warming to be considered stabilized at this level, we must not look at years separately, but take an average over 20 years (with this rule, we are at 1.3°C ).

“It is important to emphasize that this does NOT mean that we have failed to achieve the goal of the Paris agreement,” argues Celeste Saulo.

“Global temperature anomalies recorded on daily, monthly and annual scales are subject to significant variations, in part due to natural phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. They should not be put on the same footing as the long-term temperature objective set in the Paris agreement,” she explains.

But, she adds, “every fraction of a degree of warming counts.”

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