The UN strongly criticizes governments. Reason? Global warming
The United Nations thunders: there is a huge gap between promises and real actions when it comes to changes related to limiting human-caused global warming. The continuing wave of monthly temperature records on Earth is one of the biggest alarm signals.
15 months in a row – this is how long the wave of subsequent monthly global warming records lasted, which was only interrupted in September 2024. Unfortunately, there is no reason to celebrate, because last month ranks 2nd in the history of measurements. It is no wonder that the UN in its latest report slams countries around the world. According to NASA calculations cited by Discover Magazine, Earth’s average surface temperature in September was 1.26 degrees C above the long-term average from 1951 to 1980 for that month. We were only a few tenths away from the next record. For this reason, everything indicates that 2024 will almost certainly break the record for the warmest year.
Poor prognosis
Some experts even warn that we have half a chance that the average surface temperature this year will be 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the results before the industrial era. It is this level that was included in the Paris Agreements by most of the world’s nations, which decided to limit human-induced global warming.
Why is this threshold so important? As scientists point out, it is above this value that we are at risk of much more frequent heat waves, droughts and floods, of which we have unfortunately recently experienced the latter two in Poland. Moreover, if we count the average from July 2023 to June 2024, we have already exceeded this average by 0.14 degrees Celsius – according to calculations of the Copernicus program commissioned by the European Union.
Of course, this does not mean that all is lost. The presence of El Niño is also important, as it was strongly felt during the record-breaking period. However, according to the UN report, in the long term we are not even close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. All the more so because the trends are very disturbing.
According to Discover Magazine, Greenhouse gas emissions rose to a new high in 2023 at 57.1 billion tonnes (expressed as “carbon dioxide equivalent”). To fall below the 1.5 degree threshold, it will be necessary to quickly and significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions – we are talking about a 7.5% reduction each year until 2035. What is the alternative? Unfortunately, current emissions indicate that human-induced global warming is likely to increase the global average by 2.6 degrees this century – can be read in the foreword to the UN report.
