In keeping with the World Meteorological Group (WMO), 2024 is on monitor to be the warmest yr on file, with the worldwide common temperature rise reported at 1.54°C between January and September this yr.
This exceeds the long-term temperature purpose set by the Paris Settlement of limiting world warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial ranges.
“It’s one other SOS for the planet. The ambitions of the Paris Settlement are in nice peril,” WMO Secretary-Normal Celeste Saulo advised the reporters on the UN Local weather Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“The record-breaking lethal warmth, relentless drought and raging wildfires that we now have seen in numerous components of the world this yr are sadly our new actuality and a foretaste of our future,” she added.
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We urgently want to scale back greenhouse fuel emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our altering local weather. We have to step up assist for local weather change adaptation by means of local weather info providers and early warnings for all.
Celeste Saulo, secretary-general, World Meteorological Group
Since June 2023, the WMO has documented 16 consecutive months of the most well liked world imply temperatures on file. The previous decade – 2015 to 2024 – has been the warmest 10 years on the planet’s 175-year observational file.
Limiting temperature rise
Nevertheless, the top of the WMO underscored that this yr’s accelerated warming can largely be attributed to the pure El Niño phenomenon – emphasising that the “short-term” 1.54°C breach doesn’t imply we now have failed to fulfill the objectives set within the worldwide treaty for local weather change.
Saulo famous that a number of particular person years exceeding 1.5°C doesn’t essentially imply that pursuing efforts to restrict world warming is out of attain. The WMO report highlighted that long-term warming – measured over many years – stays beneath 1.5°C.
“Recorded world temperature anomalies at every day, month-to-month and annual timescales are liable to massive variations, partly due to pure phenomena,” mentioned Saulo. “As month-to-month and annual warming briefly surpass 1.5°C, they shouldn’t be equated to the long-term temperature purpose set within the Paris Settlement, which refers to world temperature ranges sustained as a median over many years.”
“Nevertheless, it’s important to recognise that each fraction of a level of warming issues. Whether or not it’s at a degree beneath or above 1.5°C of warming, each extra increment of world warming will increase local weather extremes, impacts and dangers,” she added.
The focus of planet-warming greenhouse gases hit file ranges on the finish of 2023 – with real-time monitoring indicating that they proceed to rise in 2024, in accordance with the WMO’s State of the Local weather report. The atmospheric focus of carbon dioxide is predicted to quickly exceed 420 components per million (ppm).
Pushed by fossil gasoline emissions, the common progress price of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been 2.4 ppm per yr for the previous decade.
“We urgently want to scale back greenhouse fuel emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our altering local weather. We have to step up assist for local weather change adaptation by means of local weather info providers and early warnings for all,” Saulo concluded.
Hotter world temperatures have already wrought a cascading rise in excessive climate phenomena – with unprecedented glacier loss driving sea-level rise in lots of components of the world.
In keeping with the WMO, ice sheets and polar glaciers have shed a file 1.2 meters in water equal of ice in 2023 – a quantity equal to 5 occasions the water within the Useless Sea, or about the identical quantity of water that passes by means of the Amazon River in a month. This marks the biggest loss since measurements started in 1953.
This has partly contributed to accelerating rising sea ranges. The yr 2023 set a brand new observational file for annual world imply sea degree rise. Between 2014 and 2023, world sea ranges have risen by a median of 4.77 millimetres per yr.
Rising ocean warmth has additionally introduced on stronger cyclones in some components of the world and unusually low precipitation in different areas. The ocean absorbed round 3.1 million terawatt-hours (TWh) of warmth in 2023 – equal to 18 occasions the world’s whole power consumption. Preliminary knowledge from the early months of 2024 point out that ocean warmth content material this yr has continued to rise.
Consultants have noticed marine heatwaves as ‘superchargers’ of tropical cyclones – particularly in Asia Pacific’s hurricane belt, whereas fueling extended droughts in areas like Africa.
“Local weather disaster is hammering well being, widening inequalities, harming sustainable growth, and rocking the foundations of peace. The susceptible are hardest hit,” mentioned UN Secretary-Normal António Guterres as COP29 opened on Monday.
