Scientists Mark 2024 As First Year To Pass 1.5C Of Global Warming

As California is burning down, scientists confirmed on Friday that the world has just experienced the first year in which temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said climate change is pushing the planet’s temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans. 2024 was the world’s hottest since records began, and the past ten years were the ten warmest.

“The trajectory is just incredible,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, describing how every month in 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest for that month since records began. Earth’s average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, C3S said.

Wildfires are one of the many disasters that are frequent made by the climate change. At least 10 were killed in the Los Angeles wildfires, and the figure is feared to higher.

Also Read: California Fire: 10 Killed, 10,000 Structures, 30,000 Acres Destroyed, 21 Arrested

While the impacts of climate change now affect people from the richest to the poorest on earth, world leaders are reluctant in addressing the elephant in the room. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20, has called climate change a hoax, despite the global scientific consensus that it is caused by humans.

Recent European elections have also shifted political priorities towards industrial competitiveness, with some European Union governments seeking to weaken climate policies they say hurt business, said Reuters.

Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, said fire-prone weather such as that affecting California will keep increasing, “so long as progress on tackling the root causes of climate change remains sluggish”.

The major cause of the climate change is the emission of CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, reached a fresh high of 422 parts per million in 2024, C3S said.

Also Read: Celebrities Who Lose Their Homes In Los Angeles Wildfire

That’s because while the biggest factor warming the climate is human-caused emissions, temperatures in early 2024 got an extra boost from El Nino, a warming weather pattern which is now trending towards its cooler La Nina counterpart, as per media report.