Copernicus warns 2024 set to be hottest year on record due to climate change impacts

As Europe faces a September heatwave, the EU’s climate service, Copernicus, has raised concerns about climate change, reporting that summer 2024 is set to be the hottest summer on record, both globally and in Europe. Predictions indicate that this year may surpass the threshold of a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels, a limit established in the Paris Agreement.

Climate analyst Filip Knack Kirkegaard acknowledged the seriousness of this data, asserting that many climate scientists anticipated this trend. Graphs indicate that global temperatures in 2023 and 2024 are significantly higher than those before the widespread burning of fossil fuels.

Copernicus has deemed it “increasingly likely” that 2024 will break heat records, with last year already approaching the 1.5-degree mark at a 1.48-degree increase. Many experts predict that this threshold might be breached this year.

Professor Sebastian Mernild, a member of the UN’s climate panel, likened human-induced climate change to ascending a staircase, noting that we are currently much higher than in the 1960s and 70s. He cited natural phenomena like El Niño as contributing factors to the extreme temperatures observed in recent months.

He emphasized the slow global political response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a key obstacle to addressing climate change effectively. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) estimated in June that there is an 80% chance that at least one of the next four years will exceed the 1.5-degree limit.

The effects of a warming climate are already evident, with this summer witnessing droughts in Southern Europe, landslides in India, and floods in Yemen, leading to significant loss of life. Mernild concluded that we are headed toward a progressively warmer world, with increasingly severe consequences.