A record that is continually being replaced: this is what will probably also happen in 2024. The year that has just begun is expected to be even hotter than 2023 and its exceptional month of November has already warned the UN on Friday, calling for drastic measures to reduce temperatures greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
Driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon, the warming trend – which saw every month between June and December 2023 break heat records – is expected to continue this year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) even did a probability calculation: there is a one in three chance that 2024 will be warmer than 2023, and a 99% chance that 2024 will be within five hottest in history.
Celeste Saulo, who just took up her post at the helm of the WMO, warned that El Niño, which appeared in mid-2023, risks causing the mercury to rise further in 2024. “Given that El Niño generally has the greatest impact on global economy temperatures after its peak, 2024 could be even hotter” than last year.
According to NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, the chances that 2024 will surpass 2023 are as high as “50%”. And even if 2024 doesn’t set a new record, “it will be quite close to 2023,” he told AFP.
An impressive margin between 2016 and 2023
The WMO’s annual report on global temperatures – which brings together several recognized databases – confirms that 2023 was “by far” the warmest year on record. The global annual average temperature in 2023 was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).
Today, the WMO confirms that 2023 broke the global temperature record by a huge margin. This conclusion is based on the consolidated global temperature figure derived from six international datasets.
Press release 👇🏽
pic.twitter.com/LPZ6SPGJDV— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) January 12, 2024
This is slightly less than the 1.48°C calculated by the European Copernicus Observatory in its annual report published on Tuesday. The WMO figure is in fact the average with slightly lower estimates from NASA and NOAA in particular, which use different methodologies. The Paris climate agreement aims to limit the increase to 1.5°C.
But “does it matter that Copernicus is so close to 1.5 and we are a little further away? Gavin Schmidt said. “Does it make a difference in terms of consequences for people? NO. » The various agencies agree in underlining that 2023 exceeded the previous world temperature record, recorded in 2016, by an impressive margin (0.15°C for NOAA).
“Do more”, “quickly”
For Celeste Saulo, climate change is “the greatest challenge humanity faces. A WMO report released in November found that concentrations of the three main heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – continued to increase in 2023 after record levels in 2022.
“Climate change is intensifying – and this is unequivocally due to human activities,” said Celeste Saulo, underlining the urgency of the situation: “We cannot afford to wait any longer. We are already taking action, but we must do more and we must do it quickly. »
“We must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources,” he insists, echoing many scientists.
The United Nations denounces actions that “burn the Earth”
The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, denounced the actions of humanity that are “burning the Earth”. »“ 2023 is just a glimpse of the catastrophic future that awaits us if we do not act now, ”she warned.
The WMO noted that since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, and that the nine warmest years on record were all between 2015 and 2023. The WMO is compiling data sets from six sources with a solid reputation and its publication is authoritative. According to the organization, the average temperature in 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, was 1.20°C higher than the pre-industrial average.
Even if the Earth’s average surface temperature exceeds 1.5°C in 2024, this does not mean that the world has failed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming below this threshold. This would only happen after several consecutive years above this base level.
2024-01-12 20:52:00
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