2024 could well beat the heat record set last year, the UN has already warned this Friday, January 12, calling for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
Driven by the El Nino weather phenomenon, the warming trend – which saw each month between June and December 2023 break its heat record – is expected to continue this year, explains the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
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 rank among the five hottest years ever. Celeste Saulo, who has just taken up her post at the head of the WMO, warned that El Nino, which appeared in mid-2023, risked making the mercury rise further in 2024. “Given that El Nino generally has the highest big impact on global temperatures after its peak, 2024 could be even hotter than last year.
Wide margin
The WMO’s annual report on global temperatures – which compiles several recognized databases – confirms that 2023 was “by far” the hottest year on record. The annual average global temperature in 2023 was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).
This is a little less than the 1.48°C calculated by the European Copernicus observatory in its annual report published Tuesday. The Paris Climate Accords aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C. According to NOAA, the global surface temperature in 2023 was 1.18°C higher than the 20th century average. It was also warmer by a record margin of 0.15°C than 2016, which was on the top step of the podium until then. The Arctic, northern North America, Central Asia, the North Atlantic and the eastern tropical Pacific were particularly warmer, according to the NOAA report.
“The biggest challenge”
For Celeste Saulo, climate change is “the greatest challenge facing humanity.” 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 rise in 2023 after the record levels of 2022.
“Climate change is intensifying – and this is unequivocally due to human activities,” said Celeste Saulo, emphasizing the urgency of the situation: “We cannot afford to wait any longer. We are already acting, but We need to do more and we need to do it quickly.” “We must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources,” she insists, echoing many scientists.
“Catastrophic future”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced humanity’s actions that are “burning the Earth.” “2023 is just a glimpse of the catastrophic future that awaits us if we do not act now,” he warned.
The WMO noted that since the 1980s, every decade has been warmer than the last and that the nine hottest 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 over 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’s goal of limiting global warming by below this threshold. This would only happen after several successive years above this baseline level.