“2024 Marks a Turning Point in Global Warming: Earth’s Temperature Hits Record High”
In 2024, human-caused global warming pushed Earth’s average surface temperature to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average for the first time in a full calendar year. This significant milestone, which countries worldwide had agreed to avoid in the 2015 Paris Agreement, marks a red line for dangerous climate change.
The data, presented by several institutions tracking global temperatures, including Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, shows that 2024, when combined with 2023, exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. This level of warming poses a threat to major ecosystems such as forests, coral reefs, and rainforests, as well as oceans and their currents, as highlighted in a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The record global temperatures in 2024 were accompanied by a record amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, leading to severe flooding in some regions and intensifying tropical cyclones and hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the World Meteorological Organization are set to release similar reports emphasizing these extreme climate events.
Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, urged people not to be overwhelmed by the alarming data but to see it as an opportunity to take action based on facts and evidence. He emphasized the importance of acknowledging the new climate challenges society faces and the need for proactive measures to address them.
The Copernicus data revealed that 2024 saw a significant jump in global temperatures, surpassing the previous record set in 2023. The warming trend, driven by factors like ocean warmth, has direct impacts on marine life, including coral bleaching, reef die-offs, and mass mortality of marine mammals and seabirds. On land, deadly heatwaves resulted in thousands of heat-related deaths in Europe in 2023.
Despite the alarming climate data, some governments and companies are rolling back climate action pledges. Buontempo stressed the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero rapidly to stabilize global temperatures. The coordinated release of global climate data serves as a reminder that global warming continues unabated and requires immediate attention.
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