Almost 200 jurisdictions through the Paris Agreement are aiming to limit their warming to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels, with a target of 1.5 C, to significantly reduce the impact of climate change.
While that limit seems to have breached, it will only be one year, and the threshold looks at long-term warming, not just annual. And there’s a chance we could go back down in the following years, though the global warming trend will continue upwards.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found in its latest monthly report that January to October’s temperature was the warmest in the 175-year record, at 1.28 C above the 1901-2000 average, and that “it is practically certain that 2024 will rank as the warmest year on record.”
This isn’t what was expected. NOAA’s 2023 annual climate report had pegged this year as having only a 32.58 per cent chance of being the warmest on record.
So, what happened?
Sure, we had an El Niño event, a natural, cyclical warming in a region of the Pacific Ocean that, coupled with the atmosphere, can cause global temperatures to rise. That explained some of 2023. However, the warmth that we typically see after an El Niño was expected to stick around for the first few months of 2024.
“We’re now 11 months going on 12 months after the peak of the El Niño event and global temperatures are still exceptionally high,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit climate analysis organization.
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