This year, the global average temperatures may exceed the 1.5°C threshold for the first time in history.
"We anticipate that 2024 is going to be an even warmer year because we’re going to be starting off with that El Niño event. That will peak towards the end of this year, and how big that is is going to have a big impact on the following year’s statistics," said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in an interview last year.
2023 was the "hottest year on record", with the global temperatures rising to more than 1.4 degrees Celsius than the pre-industrial levels. There were six record-breaking months and two record-breaking seasons, and the year saw numerous extreme weather disasters across the globe, including hurricanes and wildfires, leading to massive loss of life. In fact, the Arctic and Antarctic regions saw rapid ice melting along with disastrous consequences (especially, sea level rise).
However, what's more terrifying is that was not the end of the story. As foreboding studies indicate, 2024 is going to be even warmer than the preceding year, accompanied by more intensified disasters. As we are now at the beginning of the year, let's learn what the experts have to say about it.
The current El Niño event is going to be even stronger this year, increasing the heat level over the Pacific region. As Met Office’s Professor Adam Scaife explained in one of his interviews last year, "With a month to go, 2023 is almost certain to be the warmest year on record, exceeding the current record set in 2016 which was also boosted by an El Niño event."
Met Office’s Dr Nick Dunstone said, "The forecast is in line with the ongoing global warming trend of 0.2°C per decade, and is boosted by a significant El Niño event. Hence, we expect two new global temperature record-breaking years in succession, and, for the first time, we are forecasting a reasonable chance of a year temporarily exceeding 1.5°C.
It’s important to recognize that a temporary exceedance of 1.5°C won’t mean a breach of the Paris Agreement. But the first year above 1.5°C would certainly be a milestone in climate history.”
Besides the El Niño event, another reason behind such increasing global temperatures is climate change. Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement, "When we talk about climate change, we think it is something that will happen and, I think, 2023 demonstrated that climate change is happening now."
"This year has been extraordinary. We had the warmest July on record, which was also the warmest month. Every single month since then – August, September, October, and November – have been record-breaking months for that time of year. This is just unprecedented," he added.
"We are completely in uncharted territory. The water of the oceans is at a record temperature, and we have not seen temperatures like these in our observational records that started in the 1940s, and in all likelihood, we have not seen anything like that in the last thousands of years. This is a new world and in this new world, we can expect different things from what we have seen before."
NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick also confirmed that 2024 is going to be warmer than the previous year. She said, "With all these elevated temperatures that we have been seeing, there are two reasons that these have come about. One is that we actually had marine heatwaves with peaks in the early fall, and roughly 50% of the ocean was in a marine heat wave. We have also had an El Nino developing. El Nino starts really peaking in the winter and usually also leads to an increase in temperatures worldwide by 0.1 degrees on an average. We know that the maximum in the global mean temperature normally follows El Nino. We are reaching the peak of El Nino, and we expect it will decline over the spring."
"Still, 2024 is on track to be another record-breaking year. So, if we put these in the context of what is happening in our region, it is quite possible that we will see yet another very significant warming," she added.
Adam Scaife, head of long-range predictions, stated, "In addition to the El Niño event, we have anomalous high temperatures in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean, and together with climate change, these factors account for the new global temperature extremes."
