Global average temperatures have exceeded the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial, for the last 12 months.
While it will take more data to show if the target has been permanently exceeded, it does show that we are drawing closer the thresholds for large, irrevocable global impacts.
It’s one of the questions I had for Andrew Dessler PhD, of Texas A&M University, when I spoke to him last week. (above)
UPDATE: Michael Mann posts on “X”, evidence that, as El Nino fades, sea surface temperatures returning to expected (still catastrophic) levels.
It’s official: May 2024 was the hottest May on record globally, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). That makes May the 12th month in a row to set record heat.
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“A single year of exceedance above 1.5°C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” Leon Hermanson, Ph.D., of the United Kingdom Met Office said in a statement.
The countries that ratified the 2015 Paris Accord pledged to keep the number “well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels” and to attempt to “limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F)” above pre-industrial levels.
“The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas in a statement. “It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”
Global warming vs Climate change. The high temps (global warming) give us a preview of what life will be like if/when the temperature averages (climate change) breaches the 1.5C threshold.
Sorry, what?
THE TEMPERATURE JUST BREACHED THE 1.5° THRESHOLD! Yes, it’s very likely to dip below it again for a year or 2, but from now on, most of the time, then all of the time likely for a thousand years it will be over; 2° isn’t far off; & no matter what, many of the effects of the year-long breaching will remain. The ice is still melted. Plants & animals killed by it are still dead, including tens of thousands of humans, at least. Governments stretched to breaking by ecosystem collapse & disaster & taken over by fascists will still be traumatized, even if they temporarily become some semblance of democracies again. The list of durable effects of temporary overshoots is huge.
And whether it’s the Cheeto Caligula, higher food prices, Ukraine, Gaza, or the right’s preemptive power & money grabs, everything that happens now is caused largely by climate catastrophe & the larger ecological crisis.