Sultan Rabiu
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced on Thursday that 2024 is “virtually certain” to surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record.
This alarming revelation comes as world leaders prepare for next week’s UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where they will seek agreements on increased funding and more decisive action to combat climate change.
C3S Director Carlo Buontempo highlighted the core cause of this record-breaking trend. “The fundamental, underlying cause of this year’s record is climate change,” Buontempo stated in an interview with Reuters. “The climate is warm, generally. It’s warming on all continents, in all ocean basins. So, we are bound to see these records being broken.”
Between January and October, average global temperatures reached levels high enough to make 2024 the hottest year in history, barring an unlikely drop to near-zero temperature anomalies in the remaining months.
C3S reported that this year will likely be the first when global temperatures exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial levels of 1850-1900
The report also underlined the primary driver of global warming: carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas.
Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist from ETH Zurich, responded to the milestone with little surprise but significant concern. “The limits set in the Paris Agreement are starting to crumble due to the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,” Seneviratne said.
The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to limit warming to 1.5°C to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. While the world has not yet breached this target—which represents an average over decades—C3S projects that it will be surpassed around 2030.
Scientists stress that even small increments exacerbate extreme weather events. October’s extreme weather included deadly flash floods in Spain, record-breaking wildfires in Peru, and severe flooding in Bangladesh that wiped out over one million tonnes of rice, driving up food prices.
C3S, which maintains records dating back to 1940 and cross-references them with data extending to 1850, continues to track and report these concerning trends. The urgent need for action will be at the forefront when world leaders convene in Azerbaijan, as the race to mitigate climate change intensifies.
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