2024 Poised to Be Warmest Year Ever; WMO Warns of Escalating Climate Crisis

• by Tanka Dhakal (baku)
• Wednesday, November 13, 2024
• Inter Press Service

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s "State of the Climate 2024 Update" report—which was released in Baku on Monday—issued a reminder Red Alert and said this decade, 2015-2024 will be the warmest ten years on record. 

"For 16 consecutive months (from June 2023 to September 2024), the global mean exceeded anything recorded before 2023 and often by a wide margin," the report says. "2023 and 2024 will be the two warmest years on record, with the latter being on track to be the warmest, making the past 10 years the warmest decade in the 175-year observational record."

Observation of nine months (January-September) of 2024 indicated global temperature is 1.54°C above the pre-industrial average. Which means temporarily global temperature has crossed the Paris Agreement threshold, which sets the goal to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level.

But in the long run, that goal can be achieved if emissions are cut down drastically. The WMO report says, "one or more individual years exceeding 1.5°C does not necessarily mean that pursuing effort to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level as stated in the Paris Agreement is out of reach."

However, weather phenomena, including El Niño, played a role in increasing temperature, but long-term warming is driven by ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. And emission data and trends are not in favor of the Paris Agreement goal.

"Concentrations of the three key greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere reached record high observed levels in 2023," the report says. "Real-time data indicate that they 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 continuing.

"Ocean heat content in 2023 was the highest annual value on record," it says, "Preliminary data from the early months of 2024 indicate that ocean heat content this year has continued at levels comparable to those seen in 2023."

In 2023, the ocean absorbed around 3.1 million terawatt-hours (TWh) of heat, which is more than 18 times the world's total energy consumption. As water warms, it expands. Thermal expansion, combined with the glaciers and ice sheets melting, contributes to sea level rise.

"2023 set a new observational record for annual global mean sea level with a rapid rise probably driven largely by El Nino. Preliminary 2024 data shows that the global mean sea level has fallen back to levels consistent with the rising trend from 2014 to 2022, following the declining El Nino in the first half of 2024."

From 2014-2023, global mean sea level rose at a rate of 4.77 mm (millimeters) per year, which is more than double the rate from 1993-2002; at that time it was 2.13 mm per year.

Another contributing factor to the sea level rise is glacier loss and in 2023, glaciers lost a record 1.2-meter water equivalent of ice—that's approximately five times as much water as there is in the Dead Sea.

All these changes are seen in different parts of the world in the form of extreme weather events, from hurricanes to massive flash floods.

During a press meet in Baku, WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo emphasized that every fraction of a degree of warming matters and every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.

"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," Saulo said. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate. We need to step up support for climate change adaptation through climate information services and early warnings for all."

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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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