This year is \u201cvirtually certain\u201d to eclipse 2023 as the world\u2019s warmest since records began, the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The data was released ahead of next week\u2019s UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will try to agree on a huge increase in funding to tackle climate change.
\nDonald Trump\u2019s victory in the U.S. presidential election has dampened expectations for the talks.
\nC3S said that from January to October, the average global temperature had been so high that 2024 was sure to be the world\u2019s hottest year \u2013 unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged to near-zero.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fundamental, underpinning cause of this year\u2019s record is climate change,\u201d C3S Director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.
\n\u201cThe climate is warming, generally.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The scientists said 2024 will also be the first year in which the planet is more than 1.5C hotter than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
\nCarbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas are the main cause of global warming.<\/p>\n
Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at public research university ETH Zurich, said she was not surprised by the milestone.
\nShe urged governments at COP29 to agree stronger action to wean their economies off CO2-emitting fossil fuels.
\n\u201cThe limits that were set in the Paris Agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,\u201d Seneviratne said.
\nCountries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming surpassing 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), to avoid its worst consequences.<\/p>\n
The world has not breached that target \u2013 which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades \u2013 but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris goal around 2030.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s basically around the corner now,\u201d Buontempo said.<\/p>\n
Every fraction of temperature increase fuels extreme weather.
\nIn October, catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record wildfires tore through Peru, and flooding in Bangladesh destroyed more than one million tons of rice, sending food prices skyrocketing.
\nIn the U.S., Hurricane Milton was also worsened by human-caused climate change.<\/p>\n
C3S\u2019 records go back to 1940, which are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year is \u201cvirtually certain\u201d to eclipse 2023 as the world\u2019s warmest since records began, the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday. The data was released ahead of next week\u2019s UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries will try to agree on a huge increase in funding to tackle climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":55105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55106,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55104\/revisions\/55106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}