Experts’ estimates show that due to the long and hitherto unprecedented hot periods in 2023 and 2024, the average temperature in the world was 1.5 degrees higher than in pre-industrial times.
The service emphasized that this does not mean that the limit of 1.5 degrees of temperature increase has been permanently exceeded, but the EU agency warns that it is dangerously close.
The 1.5 degree temperature rise threshold set in climate change warnings does not refer to average temperatures in individual years, but over decades, but the EU agency stressed that even short-term exceeding of this level is a sign of previously unprecedented human-made changes, due to which the world is experiencing increasingly frequent and intense droughts, storms, floods and heat waves.
The EU institution confirmed that 2024 has been the warmest year on record, surpassing the level of 2023, and the prolonged period of extreme heat has caused extreme weather on all continents.
At the same time, experts do not predict that a new global temperature record will be reached in 2025, although the British Meteorological Service estimates that 2025 will be one of the three warmest years in the history of observations.
Last year, the death of 1,300 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia in extreme heat, powerful tropical storms in Asia and North America, and historic floods in Europe and Africa became some of the darkest events of the year.
The oceans, a key climate regulator and absorbing 90% of excess heat from greenhouse gases, will warm to record levels in 2024, stressing coral reefs and marine life and triggering extreme weather events.
Warmer seas mean more evaporation and more moisture in the atmosphere, which leads to heavier rainfall, energizes cyclones and creates sometimes unbearable humidity.
In 2023, the heat was contributed by a strong natural phenomenon “El Niño”, which repeats on average once every two to seven years, is associated with an increase in water surface temperature in the central and eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. However, “El Niño” ended at the beginning of 2024, and scientists have not been able to explain why the global temperature has remained at or close to a record high even after that.
Scientists warn of irreversible threats to the climate if the global temperature exceeds the average temperature for the period from 1850 to 1900, which is the reference period for the pre-industrial era, by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In Paris in 2015, almost 200 countries of the world agreed that not reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of global temperature increase is the best chance to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change, but the world has not come close to the goal of reducing global temperature increase and limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
At a UN summit in 2023, countries agreed to phase out fossil fuels, but the last meeting in November failed to make any progress on how to further reduce greenhouse emissions.