Year 2024 going to scorch Earth! To be the warmest year: agencies
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Geneva: The United Nations warned on Friday that if 2023 was the hottest year ever, 2024 will break that record and will become the warmest, Agence France-Presse reported.
The international organization said that the influence of the El Nino phenomenon will make 2024 hotter, urging the international community to make strict cuts on emissions.
UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which sets monthly temperature records every month between June and December, said that emphasized the effect of El Nino.
There is one in three chances that 2024 will be warmer than 2023, says the US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), adding that there is a 99 per cent chance that the year will be among the five hottest years ever.
However, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt said that he believes there is a 50-50 chance for the year to be warmer or slightly cooler. More data is required to confirm the temperature levels of the year, he opined, hinting at “mysterious” changes in Earth’s climate systems.
Meanwhile, the UN’s WMO said that July and August last year were the hottest months ever, officially confirming that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a huge margin. According to the agency, the annual average temperature in 2023 was 1.45 degrees Celcius above the pre-industrial levels.
The 2015 Paris Climate Accord aims to keep the global temperature below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels and, if possible, 1.5 C.
WMO secretary Celests Saulo said that the shift from cooling La Nina to warming El Nino by mid-2023 was totally reflected in the rise in temperature. Pointing out that El Nino usually has the largest impact on global temperature, she said 2024 will be hotter.
In 2023, the global surface temperature hit 1.18C above pre-industrial levels when the next hottest year, 2016, was 1.15C above the said levels, NOAA said. According to the agency, the regions that were particularly hotter were the Arctic, northern North America, central Asia, the North Atlantic, and the eastern tropical Pacific.
In November, WMO released a report that inferred that concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases, namely carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, hit record levels in 2022, and they kept growing in 2023, too.
UN Secretary-General Antonia Guterres said that humanity’s actions were scorching the world. The year 2023 is a mere preview of the catastrophic future that awaits the world if it does not act.
