The goal of the agreement is for countries around the world to commit to keeping temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius, ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and refers to long-term warming over decades rather than a single year. But last year’s unprecedented temperatures show the world is close to breaching sub-targets of the Paris Agreement, scientists say.
“Temperatures in each of the past 10 years have been among the warmest on record. We are currently on the brink of exceeding the 1.5°C limit set by the Paris Agreement, and the average for the past two years has already reached this level. Samantha Burgess, climate director at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said. , manage Copernicus.
“If we have a year with temperatures 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, it doesn’t mean we’ve reached 1.5 degrees of global warming. But it does mean we’re getting dangerously close. ,” said Joeli Logerge, director of research at the Grantham Institute, which focuses on climate change at Imperial College London.
Scientists say that while the naturally warming El Niño phenomenon contributed to last year’s rise in temperatures, man-made climate change due to the release of carbon dioxide from the burning of oil, gas and coal was the main culprit. have made it clear. Levels of carbon dioxide and other global warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached new records last year, scientists said.
The impacts of climate change, including more frequent and severe extreme weather events, will increase with every tenth of a degree of warming. Above 1.5°C, the Earth is at risk of exceeding a threshold that could trigger rapid changes and climate feedback loops.
Warmer air means more moisture, and scientists found that last year, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere reached an all-time high, 5% above the 1991-2020 average.
