By AFP
January 10, 2025
An aerial view shows a truck driving through a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in South Daytona, Florida - Copyright AFP/File Miguel J. Rodriguez CARRILLO
Last year set a record for high temperatures across the mainland United States, with the nation also pummeled by a barrage of tornadoes and destructive hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report Friday.
The announcement came as Europe’s climate monitor confirmed 2024 was the hottest year globally, with temperatures so extreme that the planet breached a critical climate threshold for the first time ever.
President-elect Donald Trump, a vocal climate skeptic, is just days away from taking office and has pledged to expand fossil fuel production — the main driver of human-caused warming — while rolling back the green policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
According to NOAA, the average annual temperature across the lower 48 states and Washington was 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit (13.1 degrees Celsius) — 3.5F above average and the highest in the agency’s 130-year records.
It was also the third-wettest year since 1895 and saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record, trailing only 2004.
Annual precipitation totaled 31.6 inches (802.1 millimeters) — 1.7 inches above average — while 1,735 tornadoes struck amid a punishing Atlantic hurricane season that included Hurricane Helene, the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland in more than half-a-century.
Wildfires scorched 8.8 million acres, 26 percent above the 20-year average. These included the devastating Park Fire in California, the state’s fourth-largest on record, which consumed nearly 430,000 acres and destroyed over 600 structures.
In total, the United States experienced 27 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, second only to the 28 recorded in 2023.
Weather extremes battered the country from all sides, with heavy rainfall mid-year and drought conditions covering 54 percent of the nation by October 29.
The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar “beyond what modern humans have ever experienced,” the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed Friday.
This does not mean the internationally-agreed target of holding warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels has been permanently breached, but it is drawing dangerously near.
Copernicus also confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that fuelled climate extremes on all continents.
A repeat in 2025 is considered less likely, with the onset of a La Nina weather system expected to offer slight relief.
China remains the world’s largest current emitter, but the United States is historically the biggest polluter, underscoring its responsibility to confront the climate crisis, according to environmental advocates.
But progress remains tepid, with US greenhouse gas emissions dipping just 0.2 percent last year, according to a study by the Rhodium Group — leaving the country dangerously off track to meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement.
Last 2 years crossed 1.5C global warming limit: EU monitor
By AFP
January 9, 2025
Climate scientists say that global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and intense - Copyright AFP LUIS TATO
The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar “beyond what modern humans have ever experienced”, an EU agency said Friday.
This does not mean the internationally-agreed 1.5C warming threshold has been permanently breached, but the Copernicus Climate Change Service said it was drawing dangerously near.
The EU monitor confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that fuelled climate extremes on all continents.
Another record-breaking year is not anticipated in 2025, as climate sceptic Donald Trump takes office, and a deadline looms for nations to commit to deeper cuts to rising levels of greenhouse gases.
But the UK weather service predicts 2025 will still rank among the top three warmest years in the history books.
This excess heat supercharges extreme weather, and 2024 saw countries from Spain to Kenya, the United States and Nepal hit by disasters that cost more than $300 billion by some estimates.
Los Angeles is battling deadly wildfires that have destroyed thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. US President Joe Biden said the fires were the most “devastating” to hit California and were proof that “climate change is real”.
Copernicus said sustained, unprecedented warming made average temperatures over 2023 and 2024 more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times.
Nearly 200 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 that meeting 1.5C offered the best chance of preventing the most catastrophic repercussions of climate change.
But the world is nowhere on track to meeting that target.
“We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5C level,” said Copernicus climate deputy director Samantha Burgess.
– Climate extremes –
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data, such as ice cores and tree rings, allow scientists to say the Earth today is likely the warmest its been in tens of thousands of years.
The 1.5C threshold is measured in decades, not individual years, but Copernicus said reaching this limit even briefly illustrated the unprecedented changes being brought about by humanity.
Scientists say every fraction of a degree above 1.5C is consequential, and that beyond a certain point the climate could shift in ways that are difficult to anticipate.
At present levels, human-driven climate change is already making droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves more frequent and intense.
The death of 1,300 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia from extreme heat, a barrage of powerful tropical storms in Asia and North America, and historic flooding in Europe and Africa marked grim milestones in 2024.
The oceans, a crucial climate regulator which absorb 90 percent of excess heat from greenhouse gases, warmed to record levels in 2024, straining coral reefs and marine life and stirring violent weather.
Warmer seas mean higher evaporation and greater moisture in the atmosphere, causing heavier rainfall, feeding energy into cyclones and bringing sometimes unbearable humidity.
Water vapour in the atmosphere hit fresh highs in 2024 and combined with elevated temperatures caused floods, heatwaves and “misery for millions of people”, Burgess said.
– ‘Stark warning’ –
Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said hitting 1.5C was a “stark warning sign”.
“We have now experienced the first taste of a 1.5C world, which has cost people and the global economy unprecedented suffering and economic costs,” he told AFP.
Scientists say the onset of a warming El Nino phenomenon in 2023 contributed to the record heat that followed.
But El Nino ended in early 2024, and scientists have puzzled over why global temperatures have remained at record or near-record levels ever since.
In December, the World Meteorological Organization said if an opposite La Nina event took over in coming months it would be too “weak and short-lived” to have much of a cooling effect.
“The future is in our hands — swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate,” said Copernicus climate director Carlo Buontempo.
Nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels at a UN summit in 2023 but the latest meeting in November struggled to make any progress around how to make deeper reductions to heat-trapping emissions.
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