At the COP 20 talks in Paris back in 2015, organizers pushing for a lower overall goal for global average temperature increases in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change had a very effective slogan: 1.5 to stay alive.
The idea was that cutting emissions in order to keep the increase in temperatures over pre-industrial levels to 1.5 degrees Celsius instead of 2 degrees, which had been the consensus position held by many climate scientists and negotiators, would set the world up for a less-bad climate future. That would be particularly true for those most at risk, like low-lying island nations, and also the Black and Brown people who tend to live on the frontlines of climate change in the U.S.
The slogan, and the effort behind it, was successful, and 1.5 degrees is the goal enshrined in the Paris agreement. But 2024, which is believed to be on track to beat out 2023 as the hottest year ever recorded, will also mark the first time the world has sailed past that stay-alive threshold.
Both of those stark bits of climate news come from a new report released by Copernicus, the European climate-change agency. But they come with significant caveats that temper them at least slightly — while still presenting significant risk to many people, including Black Americans who are at an increased risk of experiencing extreme weather events like deadly heat, hurricanes, and more.
First, the reason why 2024, like 2023, has been so dramatically hot around the globe is not solely because of climate change. The weather in both years has been affected by a very strong El Niño system, in which increased surface water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean lead to hotter (and drier) temperatures across much of the Northern U.S. and Canada.
The U.S. sizzled all summer and the heat hasn’t let up. Temperatures were warmer than normal in October in 185 out of 191 cities analyzed, and it was the hottest October in 19 cities — including nine in Texas. And, for the past two weeks it’s felt like summer in the tri-state New York area, with Central Park (80 degrees), LaGuardia Airport (77 degrees), and Newark Airport (83 degrees) all recording record highs on Nov. 6.
El Niño conditions have persisted for much of 2024 and 2023, and there have also been other compounding factors too, like large volcanic eruptions that affect the weather by increasing the amount of water vapor in the air. But while these natural systems are partly responsible for it being a warmer year, the average global temperature is also being pushed even higher by human-caused climate change, too.
The second caveat has to do with time: crossing the 1.5 degree threshold for one year certainly isn’t a good sign, but it doesn’t mean the goal of staying below that goal is totally shot either. Failure means being above 1.5 degrees Celsius for a matter of decades, not just a single year.
But what these hottest years ever do offer is a sort of preview of where we might be going without significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” is how research scientist Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth put it to the Associated Press.
The news was announced two days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, which could lead to a 4 billion-ton increase in U.S. Co2 emissions by 2030.
