EU climate watchdog says 2024 ‘certain’ to be hottest year on record | Weather News

The Copernicus Climate Change Service says this year will eclipse 2023 as the hottest on record.

Europe’s climate watchdog says 2024 is “certain” to be the hottest on record and the first year above the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) climate benchmark, a key threshold to protect the Earth from dangerous heat.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Monday that unprecedented heat had made the world’s temperatures so high between January and November that this year was certain to eclipse 2023 as the hottest on record.

“For now, it is certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” the European Union said in its monthly statement.

Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid his climate calculations.

Its records go back to 1940, but other sources of climate data – such as ice cores, tree rings, and coral skeletons – allow scientists to extend their conclusions by using evidence from the past.

Scientists say that the current period is probably the warmest on earth in the last 125,000 years.

Last month ranked as the second warmest November on record after November 2023. Portugal experienced its hottest November on record, the country’s meteorological agency said on Thursday, with average air temperatures 2.69C (4.84F) above the 1981-2010 average. .

Temperatures are rising above the critical threshold of 1.5C

In another grim scenario, 2024 will be the first calendar year warmer than 1.5C above pre-industrial times before humans started burning more fossil fuels.

Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5C over a period of many years will put the world at risk, and the international community agreed under the Paris climate agreement to fight to limit warming to this safe threshold.

However, the world is nowhere close to meeting the 1.5C target. In October, the United Nations said that current climate action would lead to a catastrophic 3.1C (5.6F) of warming.

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fuels are the main cause of climate change. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise despite the global pledge to move the world away from coal, oil and gas.

Scientists say global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and brutal, and even at current rates climate change is damaging.

This year has seen deadly floods in Spain and Kenya, powerful hurricanes in the United States and the Philippines, and severe droughts and wildfires across South America.

At the UN climate talks in November, rich countries committed to $300bn annually by 2035, a figure that was said to be woefully inadequate.