Global temperatures passed critical 1.5°C milestone for the first time in 2024: New Report
Oxford (UK), Jan 12: The earth’s climate experienced its hottest year in 2024. Extreme flooding in April killed hundreds of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A year-long drought has left Amazon river levels at an all-time low. And in Athens, Greece, the ancient Acropolis was closed in the afternoons to protect tourists from dangerous heat.
A new report from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms that 2024 was the first year on record with a global average temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
All continents except Australasia and Antarctica experienced their hottest year on record, with 11 months of the year exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius level.
Global temperatures have been at record levels – and still rising – for several years now. The previous hottest year on record was 2023. All ten of the hottest years on record have fallen within the last decade. But this is the first time a calendar year has exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.
The heat is on
Scientists at Copernicus used reanalysis to calculate the temperature rises and estimate changes to extreme events. Reanalysis is produced in real-time, combining observations from as many sources as possible – including satellites, weather stations and ships – with a state-of-the-art weather forecasting model, to build up a complete picture of the weather across the globe across the past year.
The resulting dataset is one of the key tools used by scientists globally to study weather and climate.
Limiting sustained global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is a key target of the Paris agreement, the 2015 international treaty which aims to mitigate climate change.
The 195 signatory nations pledged to “pursue efforts” to keep long-term average warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
While reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2024 is a milestone, surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius for a single year does not constitute crossing the Paris threshold.
Year-to-year fluctuations in the weather mean that even if a single year surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius, the long-term average may still lie below that. It is this long-term average temperature that the Paris agreement refers to. The current long term average is around 1.3 degrees Celsius.
Natural factors, including a strong El Nino, contributed to the increased temperatures in 2024. El Nino is a climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns globally, causing elevated ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific.
It can raise global average temperatures and make extreme events more likely in some parts of the world. While these natural fluctuations enhanced human-caused climate change in 2024, in other years they act to cool the earth, potentially reducing the observed temperature increase in a particular year.
While targets focus the minds of policymakers, it is important not to over-fixate on what are, from a scientific perspective, fairly arbitrary targets. Research has shown that catastrophic impacts, such as a rapid and potentially irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, become more likely with every small amount of warming.
These effects may occur even if thresholds are only passed temporarily. In short, every tenth of a degree of warming matters.
Unprecedented extremes
What ultimately affects humans and ecosystems is how global climate change manifests in regional climate and weather. The relationship between global climate and weather is non-linear: 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming may lead to individual heatwaves which are much hotter than the average increase in global temperatures.
Europe recorded its hottest year in 2024, which manifested in severe heatwaves, especially in southern and eastern Europe. Parts of Greece and the Balkans experienced wildfires burning large areas of pine forest and homes.
This new report shows that 44 per cent of the globe experienced strong or higher heat stress on July 10 2024, 5 per cent more than the average annual maximum.
Especially in low-income countries, this can lead to worse health outcomes and excess deaths.
The report also highlights that atmospheric moisture content (rainfall) in 2024 was 5 per cent higher than the average for recent years. Warmer air can hold more moisture and water is a potent greenhouse gas, which traps even more heat in the atmosphere.
More worryingly, this higher moisture content means extreme rainfall events can become more intense. In 2024, many regions suffered from destructive flooding, such as that in Valencia, Spain, last October.
It is not as simple as more moisture content leading to more extreme rainfall: the winds and pressure systems which move weather around also play a role and can be impacted by climate change. This means that rainfall may intensify even faster in some regions than the atmosphere’s moisture content.
To ensure that warming does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for a prolonged period, and avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also vital to adapt infrastructure to and protect people from the unprecedented extremes caused by current – and future – levels of warming.
With cooler conditions in the tropical Pacific, it remains to be seen if 2025 will be as hot as 2024. But this new record should highlight the huge influence that humans are having on our climate, and be a wake-up call to us all.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
President Trump wants to impose 15% tariff, up from 10% he announced after Supreme Court decision
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump said Saturday that he was raising the global tariff he wants to impose to 15 per cent, up from 10 per cent he had announced a day earlier.
Trump said in a social media post on that he was making the decision “Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday,” by the US Supreme Court.
After the court ruled he didn't have the emergency power to impose many sweeping tariffs, Trump signed an executive order on Friday night that enabled him to bypass Congress and impose a 10 per cent tax on imports from around the world. The catch is that those tariffs would be limited to just 150 days, unless they are extended legislatively.
Trump's post significantly ratcheting up a global tax on imports to the US yet again was the latest sign that despite the court's check, the Republican president was intent on continuing to wield in an unpredictable manner his favourite tool to for the economy and to apply global pressure. Trump's shifting announcements over the last year that he was raising and sometimes lowering tariffs with little notice jolted markets and rattled nations.
Saturday's announcement seemed to a be a sign that Trump intends to use the temporary global tariffs to continue to flex.
“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media network.
Under the order Trump signed Friday night, the 10 per cent tariff was scheduled to take effect starting February 24. The White House did not immediately respond to a message inquiring when the president would sign an updated order.
In addition to the temporary tariffs that Trump wants to set at 15 per cent, the president said Friday that he was also pursuing tariffs through other sections of federal law which require an investigation by the Commerce Department.
Trump made an unusually personal attack on the Supreme Court judges who ruled against him in a 6-3 vote, including two of those he appointed during his first term, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump, at a news conference on Friday, said of the two justices: “I think it's an embarrassment to their families."
He was still seething Friday night, posting on social media complaining about Gorsuch, Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, who ruled with the majority and wrote the majority opinion. On Saturday morning, Trump issued another post declaring that his “new hero” was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a 63-page dissent. He also praised Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who were in the minority, and said of the three dissenting justices: "There is no doubt in anyone's mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
