Worlds first year long breach of key 1.5C warming limit
- Published 9th February 2024
Chile has seen forest fires in several regions in February, including La Araucanía (pictured)
IMAGE SOURCE,AFP
By Mark Poynting
BBC News climate reporter
For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU’s climate service.
World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts.
This first year-long breach doesn’t break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.
Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.
“This far exceeds anything that is acceptable,” Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN’s climate body, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
“Look what’s happened this year with only 1.5C – we’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world.”
The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52C of warming, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The following graph shows how that compares with previous years.
The world’s sea surface is also at its highest ever recorded average temperature – yet another sign of the widespread nature of climate records. As the chart below shows, it’s particularly notable given that ocean temperatures don’t normally peak for another month or so.
Science groups differ slightly on precisely how much temperatures have increased, but all agree that the world is in by far its warmest period since modern records began – and likely for much longer.
Limiting long-term warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels – has become a key symbol of international efforts to tackle climate change.
A landmark UN report in 2018 said that the risks from climate change – such as intense heatwaves, rising sea-levels and loss of wildlife – were much higher at 2C of warming than at 1.5C.
Despite what man has and is doing to the Earth, the Earth will not be destroyed because God is in Ultimate Control and He has a purpose yet to be established on this Earth. God will not allow man to destroy the earth. Revelation 11:17-16
17 Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. 18 And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
God’s Kingdom will be established on this Earth in perfect fulfilment of Bible Prophecy just as the days in which we are living with all their problems is fulfilling Bible Prophecy. The real question is: WILL YOU BE IN GOD’S KINGDOM or will you be a casualty of these end times.
