The European Climate Agency says it will likely be the hottest year on record – again

CHICAGO (AP) — For the second year in a row, the Earth will almost certainly experience its hottest weather on record. And for the first time this year, global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, European climate agency Copernicus said on Thursday.

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

Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not have had such a long run of record temperatures without the continued increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause global warming.

He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years, both last year and this year. These include El Niño—a temporary warming in parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather around the world—as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and changes in solar energy. But he and other scientists say long-term increases in temperatures outside of fluctuations like El Niño are a bad sign.

“A very strong El Niño event is an opportunity to look at what the new normal will be like in about a decade,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

News of a likely second year of record heat comes a day after US Republican Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to increase oil drilling and production, was re-elected as president. This also comes just days before the start of the next UN climate conference, called COP29, which is due to begin in Azerbaijan. Negotiations are expected to focus on how to raise trillions of dollars to help the world switch to clean energy sources such as wind and solar and avoid further warming.

Also on Thursday, a report released by the United Nations Environment Program called for more money to adapt to global warming and its impacts. It found that the $28 billion spent globally on climate change adaptation in 2022 (the latest year for which data is available) is a record high. But that’s still a far cry from the estimated $187 billion to $359 billion needed each year to combat heat, floods, droughts and storms worsened by climate change.

“The earth is burning,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a pre-recorded statement on the report’s release. “Humanity is setting the planet on fire and paying the price,” with the most vulnerable being hit the hardest, he said.

“Frankly, there is no excuse for the world not to take adaptation seriously,” said UNEP Director Inger Andersen. “We need a well-funded and effective adaptation that includes fairness and equality.”

Buontempo noted that exceeding the warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in one year is different from the goal adopted in the 2015 Paris agreement. The goal was to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on average since pre-industrial times, within 20 or 30 years.

A United Nations report this year said the world has already warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on average since the mid-1800s – up from previous estimates of 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Fahrenheit). This is worrying as the UN says the world’s greenhouse gas emission reduction targets are still not ambitious enough to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target on track.

The target was chosen to try to prevent the worst impacts of climate change on humanity, including extreme weather conditions. “The heat waves, hurricane damage and droughts we are experiencing now are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Natalie Mahowald, chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.

Exceeding that number in 2024 doesn’t mean the overall global warming trend has changed, but “absent concerted action, it will soon happen,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson put it more bluntly. “I think we’ve missed the 1.5 degree window,” said Jackson, who heads the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ carbon dioxide emissions. “Too much warming.”

Indiana State Climatologist Beth Hall said she was not surprised by Copernicus’ latest message, but stressed that people should remember that climate is a global issue that goes beyond their local experience of weather change. “We tend to withdraw into our own individual world,” she said. Such reports “take into account a lot of places that are outside of our backyard.”

Buontempo stressed the importance of global observations, backed by international collaboration, that allow scientists to have confidence in the new report’s conclusions: Copernicus derives its results from billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.

He said exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) this year is “psychologically important” as countries make domestic decisions and approach negotiations at the annual UN climate change summit on 11 -November 22 in Azerbaijan.

“The decision is obviously ours. It belongs to each of us. And as a consequence of this, this is the decision of our society and our politicians,” he said. “But I believe these decisions will be made better if they are based on evidence and facts.”