(CN) — In 2023 the planet roasted during the hottest year on record — but this year is set to be even hotter.
2024 will in all likelihood end up as the warmest year since record-keeping began, according to a Thursday report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union space agency.
Most worrisome, some experts fear this record-breaking heat spell can’t be explained by natural causes and that the climate has reached a tipping point where global temperatures won’t dial back down.
“After 10 months of 2024, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” said Samantha Burgess, the Copernicus deputy director.
The agency also expects this year to be the first with an average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than before the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of mass burning of fossil fuels. Scientists warn the planet will face staggering problems if the climate exceeds the 1.5 C threshold for long periods of time, as is likely even if carbon emissions fall drastically around the world.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records,” Burgess said.
Last year, meteorologists believed the emergence of a strong El Niño weather pattern in March explained in large part the uptick in temperature. El Niños are associated with warmer and more unpredictable weather.
But this year’s record-setting heat can’t be linked to the El Niño because that pattern dissipated in March. Since then, the planet has been in a neutral phase with a La Niña, a weather pattern associated with cooler temperatures, beginning to emerge now.
“Therefore, you can exclude El Niño as a contributing cause,” said Giulio Betti, a climatologist at Italy’s Institute of Biometeorology of the National Research Council, in a telephone interview. “There aren’t natural causes that can explain such a big jump in temperature.”
Consequently, scientists are worried the climate may have reached a point where such high global temperatures are here for the long term due to the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, he said.
“There’s this doubt then,” Betti said. “Are we at a tipping point?”
“If temperatures remain around these levels or higher next year and the year after that, that means we’ve reached a tipping point,” he said. “This means we aren’t going back and we’re in a world with a different climate: One with more extremes, even more heat, an acceleration of melting glaciers, et cetera.”
He said climate models had forecast the planet would hit that tipping point, but getting there so quickly wasn’t in the projections. However, it will take a few more years of data to determine whether the climate is undergoing such a shift, he said.
“Compared to the forecasts, this tipping point seems to have arrived earlier than expected,” he said. “That’s really serious.”
Copernicus delivered the report just before world leaders, scientists, activists, policymakers and business leaders are set to descend on Azerbaijan for the yearly United Nations conference on climate change. At these summits, governments make pledges to tackle climate change, though their results often disappoint experts and climate activists.
Around the planet, efforts to rein in carbon emissions, the leading cause for global warming, are struggling; they suffered a major setback Tuesday with the reelection of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
During his first term, Trump sparked anger by dropping out of the Paris Agreement on climate. Under the 2015 deal, world governments pledged to work together to keep the planet from surpassing the 1.5 C threshold.
Experts expect Trump to sow deep discord by once again pulling the United States — historically the world’s leading greenhouse gas polluter — out of the Paris Agreement. He has called climate change a hoax. During the presidential campaign, he vowed to further ramp up fossil fuel production once he takes over the White House. Already under the Biden administration, the United States became the world’s leading producer of both crude oil and natural gas.
Globally, last month was the second-warmest October on record, only slightly cooler than October 2023, Copernicus said. On average, surface air temperature was 15.25 C (59.45 F), or 0.80 C (1.44 F) above average, the agency said.
Copernicus said October came in as the 15th month in a 16-month period when the average surface air temperature exceeded the 1.5 C mark. Over the past 12 months, the average global temperature measured 1.62 C (2.91 F) above the pre-industrial average, it added.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.