Over the past 12 months, every month has surpassed the previous month’s temperature record, and signs of climate degradation are already present, a new analysis shows.
Record temperatures this summer PHOTO: EPA EFE
Earth has broken temperature records for 12 consecutive months, with each month warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to Live Science.
Each month since June 2023 has been warmer than the last, making the global average temperature between July 2023 and June 2024 1.64 degrees Celsius higher than before the Industrial Revolution, when humans began to burn fossil fuels to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“This is more than a statistical quirk and highlights a broad and ongoing change in our climate. Even if this particular series of extremes ends at some point, we’re sure to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm. This is inevitable unless we stop adding (greenhouse gases) to the atmosphere and oceans“, said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which produced the report, according to the cited publication.
The 12-month streak was driven in part by the El Niño phenomenon (a climate cycle in which waters in the eastern tropical Pacific become warmer than usual), which persisted from June 2023 to May 2024, leading to sea temperatures above average in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific.
“The climate continues to alarm us. The past 12 months have broken records like never before, driven primarily by our greenhouse gas emissions and an additional boost from the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific.”said Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Scientists believe that global warming above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures is an important threshold. According to them, warming beyond this threshold greatly increases the likelihood of devastating and irreversible climate disasters.
2024 could be the warmest year
But 1.5 degrees Celsius is also an important limit. With an increase of 1.5C, the world’s climate is approaching several tipping points that will trigger heat waves, floods, famine and widespread destruction of ecosystems, the United Nations warned in a 2018 special report.
While the new findings are worrying, the report points out that the 1.5C and 2C limits are targets for the planet over a period of 20-30 years, meaning that the commitments have not yet been formally breached.
But record temperatures are unlikely to subside anytime soon, researchers say. Scientists initially hoped the end of El Niño might give the planet a break, but the U.S. is still expected to experience warmer-than-average temperatures for the rest of the summer, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“I now estimate that there is about a 95% chance that 2024 will surpass 2023 and be the warmest year since records of global surface temperatures began in the mid-1800s”wrote Zeke Hausfather, a climatologist at the American non-profit organization Berkeley Earth, on X.
