Hottest year on record sent planet past 1.5C of heating for first time in 2024
www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/10/wor…
Summary
In 2024, global temperatures rose 1.6°C above preindustrial levels, surpassing the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold for the first time.
The rise, driven by fossil fuel emissions and intensified by El Niño, caused extreme weather, record heatwaves, and widespread human suffering.
Experts warn the planet is on track for catastrophic 2.7°C heating by 2100 unless emissions drop 45% by 2030.
Despite renewable energy advances, 2024 saw record carbon emissions.
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The globe is heating, and the data is not lying. But I wish people would not try to shoehorn this unique el nino year weather as a precursor for all future non el nino years. At least this article mentions that to an extent but it is definitely trying to capitalize on the fear the headline implies.
Since 2024 was an el nino year the weather was much less predictable. The weather patterns for the entire globe were slightly off, and it's traditionally warmer and wetter then average globally.
Basically I feel like what's going to happen is next year it will be much less hot and all the climate deniers are going to look at the headlines like this from last year and hold snowballs and say how crazy we are are for thinking this is real. Which will convince some voters and more anti-climate policies will be put in place.
2015 was last elnino (recent one ended in 2023), and all temperatures since 2015 were higher than 2015. 2023 seems to have been a step up, and 2024 follows the 2016 record (held until 2023) pattern. CO2 atmopheric increases this last year were well above the record past 10 year average.
next year it will be much less hot and all the climate deniers are going to look at the headlines like this from last year and hold snowballs and say how crazy we are are for thinking this is real.
A bold call there Cotton. There is no case for an expected downtrend in global temperatures. A 1.4C year is not a rally cry for everything is fine. A polar vortex, with snowballs, in winter does not mean a cooler global year.
I thought of adding a couple of links that clarify El Niño and La Niña
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-10/hottest-year-on-record-2024-in-photos-and-charts/104770946 has more itemized details of year's impacts. Crossposting comment from r/australia:
From "water report" details:
In 2024, months with record-low precipitation were 38% more common than during the 1995-2005 baseline period, while record-high 24h rainfall extremes were 52% more frequent.
Water-related disasters caused major damage in 2024. They caused over 8,700 deaths, displaced 40 million people, and inflicted more than US$550 billion in damages. Flash floods, landslides, and tropical cyclones were the worst types of disasters in terms of casualties and economic damage.
The likelihood of monthly records set should go down each year, in a non global warming world, because the bar always gets higher. The damages number is a big insurance factor, and the data does not include forest fires.
A missing topic in OP is that Arctic sea ice extent and volume are at extreme record low levels currently, that may lead to a blue north pole next summer. Hudson and Baffin Bay and Labrador sea being the main record low spots also means an early spring for Greenland and more melting on its west coast.
Arctic summer temperatures have been pretty stable since 2016. Ice extent and volume keeps declining because current temperatures are enough for ocean to get warmer each year both earlier and later in melt season that delays and weakens total freezing.
We did it! We're number one (point five)
I remember when it was still believed we could keep under 1.5°C if we could hit our targets. But we didn't meet those targets and here we are.
Fuck.
We didn't even try.
Back then (like, a few years ago, really), the idea was that the tipping point was far off.
When I was a kid (I’m mid 30s), we heard “if we don’t make changes over the next few decades, a couple hundred years into the future the world will start to become more hostile.”
A few short years later, it was “the coming generation will need to make changes or we will be leaving a world much less inhabitable for our children’s children.”
That very quickly turned into “this is happening right now.”
The talk of 1.5c warming was lifetimes off. And here we did it while the fuckin boomers are still clinging to power (in the US anyway).
Whereas now, the changes have already happened.
A decade ago, kinda - see e.g. wildfires in California every single quarter now (since 2014 iirc?), plus just about everywhere else as well like remember when Australia was on fire?
Okay so the 1.5 threshold wasn't reached a decade ago, but who even knows where the real tipping point is, or rather *was*.
But going along with your theme: it was supposed to be hundreds of years from now when the climate would change, and *start to become* more hostile. Whereas now, that "start" was a long way back, and some people born since then have already reached puberty.
The entire targets thing was a lie. Kinda a soft approach to 'we are fucked'
This is why I don't have children.
This is why I only had one child.
This just in 2025 is the hottest year on record. Oh and guess what 2026 is also the hottest year on record. Oh and what's this 2027 is the hottest year on record.
But don’t worry, 2028 will only be the hottest year since 2023! (Followed of course by the hottest year on record in 2029 again).
Yep up till 2030 when there will be no one left to report on it. Would the year be the hottest year if there is no one left to report it? Does a tree make a sound if no one can hear it?
This reminds me of Office Space.
"So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life"
Oddly enough, Office Space also ends with everything on fire!
Nice. That saves money on heating. Can use it for the ammo I'll need in the upcoming water wars.
Better get ready soon, looks like round 1 is about to happen with u.s. vs Canada once trump gets in.
Obligatory hottest year so far comment
We've been breaking the 1.5 mark for some time now. We all have the Luigi mandate now.
Our national news service had the balls to end their reporting on this news on a (techno)optimistic note, that everything will be fine if we just make a little effort. Scandelous and willful negligence.
With social media freeks, authoritarian cold war relics, adventure capitalists and usefull idiots (former athletes, musicians, beauty pageant winners, etc) running the show the planet is fucked.