The World Meteo Organization thunders: 2024 will be the warmest in history

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The COP climate summit taking place in Azerbaijan is a cyclical meeting of UN representatives on climate. It has already happened twice in Poland, and currently, in Baku, we are represented by the president of our country, Andrzej Duda. It was at the beginning of this meeting that data from the latest State of the Climate 2024 report were presented. The results are very disturbing.

“Every fraction counts”

From January to September 2024, the average global temperature rose by 1.54 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels – according to the latest WMO publication. But it’s not all bad news. The years 2015-24 are also the warmest decade in recorded history. It is also important because at the beginning of this period, precisely in 2015, the Paris Agreements were adopted aimed to prevent average global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees and to pursue efforts to limit this increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius – reminds the website Naukawpolsce.pl

According to the WMO representative, 2024 will be the warmest in recorded history. Man-made global warming, however, brings us other effects, such as huge floods that have recently hit the south of Spain. In a way, it may be comforting that, as Celeste Saulo emphasized, the 1.5 degree threshold has still not been exceeded. In this case, the average from the last 20 years is taken into account. That’s why we’re talking about a headroom of 0.2 degrees.

This mechanism results, among other things, from the variability of our weather. It is influenced by both local phenomena and those with a larger scope, such as El Nino. Hence the need to use an average over a longer period. However, this does not exempt us from stopping our activities, because, as the WMO secretary said, “every fraction of a degree of warming counts.”