cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24110139
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.
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.
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 it is an el nino year the weather is much less predictable. The weather patterns for the entire globe are 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
Fuck
