Year 2024 to be the first to breach 1.5C warming limit: EU climate agency

The Copernicus Climate Change Service warning comes days before nations are due to gather for crunch climate talks led by the UN.

For the first time, the Earth’s temperature in 2024 has risen more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, according to the European Union’s climate agency.

On Thursday, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said this year is also “virtually certain” to eclipse 2023 as the world’s warmest since records began.

“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said, days before nations are due to gather for crunch climate talks led by the United Nations.

The European agency said the world was passing a “new milestone” of temperature records that should be a call to accelerate action to cut planet-heating emissions at the United Nations negotiations in Azerbaijan next week.

Last month –  marked by deadly flooding in Spain and Hurricane Milton in the United States –  was the second hottest October on record, with average global temperatures second only to the same period in 2023.

“Humanity’s torching the planet and paying the price,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a speech on Thursday, listing a string of disastrous floods, fires, heatwaves and hurricanes across the world this year so far.

“Behind each of these headlines is human tragedy, economic and ecological destruction, and political failure.”

C3S said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55C (2.79F) above the 1850-1900 average – the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels.

This does not amount to a breach of the Paris deal, which strives to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) and preferably to 1.5C (2.7F), as these targets are measured over decades, not individual years.

The UN climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, taking place in the wake of the United States election victory by Donald Trump, will set the stage for a new round of crucial carbon-cutting targets.

Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax”, pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement during his first presidency. While President Joe Biden rejoined the agreement, Trump has threatened to withdraw again.

Meanwhile, average global temperatures have reached new peaks, as have concentrations of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists say the safer 1.5C (2.7F) limit is rapidly slipping out of reach while stressing that every tenth of a degree in temperature rises signals progressively more damaging impacts.

Last month, the UN said the current course of action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C (5.58F) of warming this century, while all existing climate pledges taken in full would still amount to a devastating 2.6C (4.68F) temperature rise.

In a report on Thursday, the UN warned that the amount of money going to poorer countries for adaptation measures was barely one-tenth of what is needed to spend on disaster preparedness.