European Climate Agency says this will Likely be the Hottest Year on Record - MIRATECH
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European Climate Agency says this will Likely be the Hottest Year on Record

November 18, 2024

For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it’s ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday, Nov. 7, according to a story by AP News.

“It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.

He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.

“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

News of a likely second year of record heat comes a day after U.S. Republican Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to boost oil drilling and production, was reelected to the presidency. It also comes days before the next U.N. climate conference, called COP29, is set to begin in Azerbaijan. Talks are expected to focus on how to generate trillions of dollars to help the world transition to clean energies like wind and solar and avoid more warming.

Also on Thursday, a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme called for increased funds to adapt to global heating and its consequences. It found that the $28 billion spent worldwide to adapt to climate change in 2022 — the latest year the data is available — is an all time high. But it’s still far short of the estimated $187 to $359 billion needed every year to deal with the heat, floods, droughts and storms exacerbated by climate change.

“Earth’s ablaze,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a pre-recorded statement marking the report’s release. “Humanity’s torching the planet and paying the price” with the vulnerable most affected, he said.

“Frankly, there is no excuse for the world not to get serious about adaptation,” said UNEP’s director Inger Andersen. “We need well-financed and effective adaptation that incorporates fairness and equity.”

Buontempo pointed out that going over the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold of warming for a single year is different than the goal adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement. That goal was meant to try to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times on average, over 20 or 30 years.

A United Nations report this year said that since the mid-1800s on average, the world has already heated up 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) — up from previous estimates of 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s of concern because the U.N. says the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals of the world’s nations still aren’t nearly ambitious enough to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius target on track.