Just in time for the next global climate conference (COP29) next week in Azerbaijan, the authoritative the European Copernicus Climate Change Service is predicting that 2024 will be the hottest year on record.
It is expected that 2024 will end up at least 1.55C hotter than pre-industrial times. This would surpass the current record of 1.48C, which was set last year.
Temperatures have been so hot in the first ten months that experts say an implausible drop in the last two months would be required to prevent a new record.
This would also represent the first time that a full calendar year has exceeded 1.5C, the now pretty much discarded target limit countries have been aiming in the last ten years since the Paris Agreement in 2015.
The effect, reported just about daily from somewhere on the planet – more intense storms, hotter and longer heatwaves, and more extreme heavy rainfall.
The UN recently warned that the world could warm by more than 3C in this century based upon current national policies.
Here in NZ, the Government must present its Emissions Reduction Plan by year’s end, as required by the Climate Change Act, and then in February next year the country’s updated ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ (NDC), our contribution to limiting greenhouse gases to help meet the Paris goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C.
With a new US President ‘s policies in place in the near future the outlook is pretty bleak with a forecast (made after the election within a few days by climate scientists) of huge amounts of carbon emissions under Trump’s proposals. So I guess we can expect even greater temperatures, storms etc – since, after all, we have Trump saying that climate change is a rort and our own Shane Jones saying that it’s just hysteria from a few precious people