1 or 2 years exceeding 1.5C threshold 'does not imply that Paris Agreement has been breached,' EU's Copernicus says, but risk looms for 2030s with 'current rate of warming'
The global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by countries was surpassed in 2024, the hottest year on record, according to a report.
“2024 had a global average temperature of 15.10°C,” EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report on Friday.
It stressed: “2024 was 0.72°C warmer than the 1991–2020 average, and 1.60°C warmer than the pre-industrial level making it the first calendar year to exceed 1.5 above that level.”
The global average temperature was 14.98C in 2023, making it the hottest year back then since 1850.
This is an important threshold as governments agreed in 2015 with the Paris Agreement to prevent the average temperatures from surpassing 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial levels.
The C3S report, however, explains that this may not be as critical as it sounds: “One or two years that exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level does not imply that the Paris Agreement has been breached. However, with the current rate of warming at more than 0.2°C per decade, the probability of breaching the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement within the 2030s is highly likely.”
The report added that in 2024, "as in 2023, the tropics ... and the northern mid-latitudes ... contributed the most to the record global temperature anomalies."
- Situation in Europe
“2024 was the warmest year on record for Europe with an average temperature of 10.69°C,” which exceeds by 1.47°C the average for the 1991–2020 reference period, and by 2.92°C the pre-industrial level, according to the report.
“All four European seasons were warmer than average,” the C3S also said, which is not a surprise as the continent more and more lacks precipitation in winters and faces drier and warmer summers.
