"Ten months in, it's now almost certain that 2024 will be the warmest year ever and the first year with more than 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels", says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus in a press release.
The long-term goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep the global temperature increase well below 2 degrees with a target of 1.5 degrees to limit the damage and losses caused by climate change.
Psychologically important
Carlo Buontempo, head of Copernicus' climate change service, notes that there is a difference between the temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees in one year and the Paris Agreement's long-term goal of limiting warming over a period of 20-30 years.
He calls the current warming above 1.5 degrees psychologically important ahead of the upcoming climate conference, COP29, which begins next week.
The choice is clearly ours, each and every one of us. And in the long run, our society's and our decision-makers' choice. But I believe that those decisions are made better if they are based on evidence and facts, he says to the news agency AP.
Out of reach
Rob Jackson, climate researcher at Stanford University, tells AP that the goal is now out of reach.
I think we've missed the 1.5-degree window. The warming is too great.
2023 was the warmest year on record, but this year has seen a number of new records set.
In October, the global temperature was 1.65 degrees above the pre-industrial average. It was the fifteenth month in a sixteen-month period with an average temperature of more than 1.5 degrees above average.
October also saw above-normal rainfall over large parts of Europe, not least in Spain, where heavy rainfall has claimed more than 200 lives.
