2024 Poised To Be Warmest Year Ever; WMO Warns of Growing Climate Crisis – Global Issues
BAKU, Nov 13 (IPS) – Once again, scientists have issued a red warning by analyzing the ongoing global climate and its impact on the climate. The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record, thanks to an extended streak of monthly high temperatures around the world.
According to the report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) “State of the Climate 2024 Update” – released in Baku on Monday – it issued a Red Alert reminder and said that this decade, 2015-2024 will be the hottest decade in history. .
“For 16 consecutive months (from June 2023 to September 2024), the global average has exceeded anything recorded before 2023 and often by wide amounts,” the report said. “2023 and 2024 will be the two hottest years on record, and the latter will be the warmest, making the past 10 years the warmest decade in the 175-year record.”
Observations for the nine months (January-September) of 2024 showed a global temperature of 1.54°C above the pre-industrial average. This means that the global average temperature has exceeded the limit of the Paris Agreement, which sets the goal of reducing the temperature to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
But in the long run, that goal can be achieved if emissions are significantly reduced. The WMO report says, “one or more years above 1.5°C does not necessarily mean that the pursuit of the effort to reduce the temperature to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level as stated in the Paris Agreement will not be achieved.”
However, weather patterns, including El Niño, have contributed to the increase in temperature, but the long-term warming is caused by continuous greenhouse gas emissions. And the data released and the trends are not in line with the goal of the Paris Agreement.
“Concentrations of three important greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere have reached the highest levels seen in 2023,” the report said. “Real-time data shows that they have continued to rise in 2024.”
Now, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide are 151 percent, 265 percent, and 124 percent, respectively, of pre-industrial levels.
According to the WMO, ocean warming is also ongoing.
“Ocean heat content in 2023 was the highest annual value on record,” it said, “preliminary data for the first months of 2024 show that ocean temperatures this year continued at levels similar to those seen in 2023.”
By 2023, the ocean absorbed about 3.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) of heat, which is more than 18 times the energy used worldwide. As water warms, it expands. Rising temperatures, combined with glaciers and melting ice sheets, are contributing to sea level rise.
“2023 set a new record for the fastest annual global sea level rise likely to be driven largely by El Nino. Preliminary data for 2024 shows that global sea level has returned to levels consistent with the increase from 2014 to 2022, following a decline of El Nino in the first half of 2024.”
From 2014-2023, global sea level rose at a rate of 4.77 mm (millimeters) per year, more than double the rate from 1993-2002; at that time it was 2.13 mm per year.
Another factor contributing to sea level rise is ice loss and by 2023, glaciers lost a record 1.2 meters of ice-equivalent water—that’s five times more water than the Dead Sea.
All these changes are seen in different parts of the world with extreme weather, from hurricanes to major floods.
During a press conference in Baku, WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo stressed that every part of the issue of some degree of warming and other increases in global warming increases the adverse weather, impacts and risks.
“The record-breaking rains and floods, fast-growing storms, deadly heat, chronic droughts and wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately new to us and a foreshadowing of our future,” said Saulo. “We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of a changing climate. We need to strengthen support for climate change through climate information services and early warning for all.”
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
