This year is on track to become the first full year of 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels, smashing last year's record jump in temperatures already, which was 0.60°C above the 1991-2020 average.
This finding is supported by data from Copernicus, Berkeley Earth and the UK Met Office released for the United Nation's COP29 climate change summit which is currently underway in Azerbaijan.
While an El Niño fueled the warming at the start of the year, the excessive heat has persisted even after its dissipation a few months ago.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provisional report on the State of the Global Climate in 2024 was just released: wmo.int/publication-…"The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures." #COP29
— Zack Labe (@zlabe.bsky.social) 2024-11-11T21:57:48.669Z
People and countless animals are already dying as a direct consequence of this massive excess of fossil fuel-induced heat, as well as from the growing number of natural disasters it's stoking. It's now estimated that three in four of us are set to face extreme weather changes in the next two decades.
All that extra energy in our atmosphere is jerking our climate systems from one extreme to another, like a wobbling spinning top just before it topples over. In the last month alone, this has contributed to the deadly floods in Valencia, hurricane Milton slamming into the US, wildfires tearing through Peru, and the loss of over 1 million tons of rice from floods in Bangladesh, massively inflating the staple food's price.
"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," says The World Meteorological Organization (WHO) Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
WHO explains that even a year above 1.5°C does not mean we've surpassed the Paris Agreement goal permanently, as that's based on a decades-long average. Shorter time scale fluctuations such as El Niño and La Niña can still change things rapidly.
But other researchers argue we've already smashed past this threshold, raising concerns the wobbling spinning top is faltering for some of Earth's critical life support systems. These include collapses of the Atlantic Ocean's main current system, the Amazon rainforest and polar ice sheets.
Climate scientist Mark Howden from Australian National University warns that if world leaders and industries don't rapidly curb emissions soon we're heading towards a 3°C world.
"We've seen major impacts already across the globe in almost every system and every place at, roughly speaking,1.25 degrees on a decadal basis," Howden explains in a media briefing.
"Once we start to head towards those bigger numbers, 2.5 - 2.93 degrees, we're likely to suffer very, very significantly from climate change. The costs of that sort of climate change are massive and they grossly outweigh the costs of reducing emissions."
While the amount of warming is important for understanding where we're heading, in a practical way it's also superfluous, as our goal remains the same regardless: reducing the fossil fuel emissions causing the warming. This has been the aim since the first IPCC climate change reports in 1990, yet we're still collectively increasing our greenhouse gas emissions.
With reports Azerbaijan hosts are also using the UN's COP29 to make new fossil fuel deals, and with the current geopolitical circumstances, researchers and other climate professionals have become skeptical of the climate summits.
"You can't say that an agreement that lets a problem grow into an emergency is doing a good job," Durwood Zaelke, cofounder of the Center for International Environmental Law, told Tik Root at Grist. "It's not."
But every little thing we can do to reduce warming now will still save future lives, regardless of what point we're at on this dark timeline.
"It is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters," emphasizes Saulo. "Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks."
