Climate change drives world to first 12-month spell over 1.5 degrees Celsius
- World just had hottest January on record as human-caused climate change and El Nino weather pattern push up temperatures
- US scientists say 2024 has a one-in-three chance of being even hotter than last year, and a 99 per cent chance of ranking in the top 5 warmest years
The world just experienced its warmest January on record, marking the first 12-month period in which temperatures averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service said on Thursday.
Already 2023 was the planet’s hottest year in global records going back to 1850, as human-caused climate change and El Nino, the weather pattern that warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, pushed temperatures higher.
“It is a significant milestone to see the global mean temperature for a 12-month period exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures for the first time,” Matt Patterson, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford, said.
The previous warmest January was in 2020, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) records which go back to 1950.
Countries agreed at United Nations climate talks in Paris in 2015 to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and aim to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level regarded as crucial to preventing the most severe consequences.