This year is “virtually certain” to eclipse last year as the world’s warmest since records began, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said yesterday.
The data was released ahead of next week’s UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where countries would try to agree to a huge increase in funding to tackle climate change.
However, former US president Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has dampened expectations for what the talks can achieve.
Photo: AFP
C3S said that from January to last month, the average global temperature had been so high that this year is sure to be the world’s hottest year — unless the temperature anomaly in the rest of the year plunged to near-zero.
“The fundamental, underpinning cause of this year’s record is climate change,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo said.
“The climate is warming, generally. It’s warming in all continents, in all ocean basins,” he said.
“So we are bound to see those records being broken,” he added.
The scientists said that this year would also be the first year in which the planet is more than 1.5C° hotter than in the 1850 to 1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are the main cause of global warming.
ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne said she was not surprised by the milestone, and urged governments at COP29 to agree to stronger action to wean their economies off carbon dioxide-emitting fossil fuels.
“The limits that were set in the Paris agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world,” she said.
Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming surpassing 1.5C°, to avoid its worst consequences.
The world has not breached that target — which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C° over decades — but C3S now expects the world to exceed the Paris goal around 2030.
“It’s basically around the corner now,” Buontempo said.
Every fraction of temperature increase fuels extreme weather.
Last month, catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people in Spain, record wildfires tore through Peru and flooding in Bangladesh destroyed more than 1 million tonnes of rice, sending food prices skyrocketing.
In the US, Hurricane Milton was also worsened by human-caused climate change.
C3S’ records go back to 1940, which are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS