BERLIN (AP) – Global temperatures briefly exceeded a key warming threshold earlier this month, an indication of heat and its associated damage, scientists fear.
Since then, mercury has fallen again, but experts say the brief spike marked a new global heat record for June and suggests more extremes are ahead as the planet enters an El Niño phase that could last for years.
Researchers at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Thursday that in early June, global surface air temperatures rose 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels for the first time. That’s the threshold that governments were aiming to meet at a 2015 summit in Paris.
“Just because we temporarily rose above 1.5 degrees doesn’t mean we’ve exceeded the Paris Agreement limit,” warned Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus program. For this to happen, the globe must exceed this threshold for a much longer period of time, say a few decades instead of a few weeks.
Still, the 11 days we’ve spent at the 1.5 degree cusp shows how important it is for scientists to keep a close eye on the health of the planet, not least because previous peaks above 1.5 have all occurred in winter or spring in the northern hemisphere, she said. “It’s really important to monitor the situation to understand how this will affect the summer ahead.”
“As a climate researcher, I feel like I’m watching a global train crash in slow motion. It’s quite frustrating,” said Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who was not involved in the measurements.
That’s because a three-year La Niña period – which tends to mitigate the effects of global warming – has given way to its opposite, an El Niño period that could raise average temperatures by another half a degree or more.
“2024 is expected to be even warmer than 2023 as this El Niño continues to develop,” Burgess said.
“We also know that the warmer the global climate, the more likely we are to have extreme events, and the more severe those extreme events can be,” she said. “So there is a direct correlation between the degree of global warming and the frequency and intensity of extreme events.”
Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said the Copernicus data “are a reminder of how close we are to the 1.5°C global warming limit, beyond which lurk major risks for humanity in terms of climate instability and ecosystem loss .”
Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist who, like Rahmstorf, was not involved in collecting the Copernicus data, said their meaning is still unclear.
“But sometime in the next few years we will break global temperature records,” he said. “It’s the coming El Niño, yes. But it’s not just El Nino. We loaded the climate system. No one should be surprised when we set advanced global records. 1.5°C comes quickly; it could be here already.”
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