According to the UK Met Office, global warming in 2024 will exceed this year’s levels. If 2023 is set to become the hottest year ever, beating the previous records of 2016 and 2020, the next 12 months will be marked by even more marked temperature anomalies.
Met Office forecasts set the global average temperature for 2024 in a range of +1.34°C to +1.58°C, with a central estimate of +1.46°C
In 2020, the average temperature of the Planet rose above +1.2°C compared to the pre-industrial period, and the scientific community hoped that global warming would remain more or less on those values in the following years. This was not the case: 2023 ended at almost +1.5°C, between summer and autumn we experienced several months above +1.7°C, and for a few days in November we even exceeded the 2-degree threshold. Global warming is accelerating.
The 2024 global warming levels will make the ongoing debate over what it means to breach the 1.5-degree threshold even more divisive. The Paris Agreement’s most ambitious limit is not broken if the world exceeds that temperature for just one year. And all the most optimistic but, at the same time, realistic emissions scenarios that the IPCC’s latest report came up with speak of “temporary overshoot” of the 1.5-degree threshold: that is, getting to 1.6°C (minimum overshoot) or 1.8°C (substantial overshoot) but getting back below 1.5°C before the end of the century.
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