A record that is constantly being supplanted: this is what is likely to happen again in 2024. The year that has just begun is expected to be even hotter than 2023 and its exceptional month of November, the UN already warned on Friday, calling for drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
Spurred on by the El Niño weather phenomenon, the warming trend – which saw its heat record every month between June and December 2023 – is expected to continue this year, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have even done a probability calculation: there is a one-in-three chance that 2024 will be warmer than 2023, and a 99% chance that 2024 will rank among the five warmest years in history.
Celeste Saulo, who has just taken up her post as head of the WMO, has warned that El Niño, which appeared in mid-2023, could cause the mercury to rise further in 2024. "Given that El Niño typically has the greatest impact on global temperatures after its peak, 2024 could be even warmer" than last year.
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According to Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA, the chances of 2024 beating 2023 are even "50%". And even if 2024 does not mark a new record, it "will be quite close to 2023", he told AFP.
An impressive margin between 2016 and 2023
The WMO's annual report on global temperatures – which compiles several recognized databases – confirms that 2023 was "by far" the hottest year on record. The annual average global temperature in 2023 was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).
Today, WMO confirms that 2023 smashed the global temperature record by a huge margin. This conclusion is based on the consolidated global temperature figure derived from six international datasets.
Press release 👇🏽
https://t.co/LvFolGaWDQ pic.twitter.com/LPZ6SPGJDV
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) January 12, 2024
This is slightly lower than the 1.48°C calculated by the European Copernicus Observatory in its annual report published on Tuesday. The WMO figure is an average of the slightly lower estimates from NASA and NOAA in particular, which use different methodologies. The Paris climate agreement aims to limit the rise to 1.5°C.
But "does it matter that Copernicus is so close to 1.5 and that we're a little further away?" said Schmidt. "Does it make a difference in terms of consequences for people? No. The various agencies agree that 2023 exceeded by an impressive margin (0.15°C for NOAA) the previous world temperature record, set in 2016.
'Do more', 'fast'
For Celeste Saulo, climate change is "the greatest challenge facing humanity." A WMO report released in November found that concentrations of the three main heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — continued to rise in 2023 after record levels in 2022.
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"Climate change is intensifying – and this is unequivocally due to human activities," said Celeste Saulo, stressing the urgency of the situation: "We cannot afford to wait any longer. We are already acting, but we need to do more and we need to do it quickly. »
"We need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources," she said.
United Nations denounces actions that 'burn the Earth'
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced humanity's actions that are "burning the Earth." "2023 is just a glimpse of the catastrophic future that awaits us if we don't act now," he warned.
The WMO pointed out that since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous and that the nine warmest years on record were all warmer between 2015 and 2023. WMO compiles datasets from six reputable sources and is published in an authoritative manner. According to the organization, the 10-year average temperature from 2014 to 2023 was 1.20°C above the pre-industrial average.
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Even if the average temperature of the Earth's surface exceeds 1.5°C in 2024, this does not mean that the world has failed to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming below this threshold. This would only happen after several successive years above this baseline.