Meltwater comes out of the Bråsvellbreen glacier in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard
Sebnem Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images
The unprecedented levels of ocean heat, ice melting and sea level elevation are among the many key climate change measures establishing alarming records in recent years, according to the state of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the World Climate Report for 2024.
“We have seen record temperatures in large areas,” says John Kennedy at WMO. The inversion of some of the resulting changes would take hundreds or thousands of years, warns the report.
The report defines a dark list of unwanted records. For example, the sea level elevation rate has doubled since the start of satellite measures, going from 2.1 millimeters per year between 1993 and 2000 to 4.7 mm per year between 2015 and 2024.
The glaciers lose ice faster than ever, with the greatest mass loss of glaciers during a three -year period in the past three years. The losses were particularly important in Norway – including the archipelago of the north of Svalbard – as well as in Sweden and in tropical Andes.
The 18 years with the lowest measure of summer ice ice in the Arctic Ocean have been the last 18 years, and the three years with the lowest measure of sea ice around the Antarctic continent have been the last three years.
“What is happening in the poles does not necessarily remain in the poles,” warns Kennedy, which means that changes in these areas can affect the climate around the whole planet.
A new record for ocean heat – a key measurement of How much additional heat the planet accumulates – has been established in each of the past eight years. And the hottest 10 years ever recorded have been the last 10 years.
The report also notes that 2024 was probably The first calendar year at 1.5 ° C warmer than the pre -industrial eraWith an average global temperature close to the surface of 1.55 ° C above the average from 1850 to 1900, more or less 0.13 ° C. This uncertain in the measurement means that there is also a chance that it is not hotter than 1.5 ° C.
Only one year above this value does not mean that the objective of 1.5 ° C indicated in the Paris Agreement was violated, explains Kennedy. Although it is not clearly defined, most climatologists agree that it refers to the average temperature on something like 20 years rather than one year.
The report also describes three methods envisaged to define when we have exceeded the objective of Paris. According to these, the global climate is now 1.34 ° C, 1.37 ° C or 1.41 ° C warmer than the average from 1850 to 1900.
The error bars for these three methods, however, are all wide enough to exceed 1.5 ° C, which means that there is a small chance We have already exceeded the Paris target of 1.5 ° C. “We cannot exclude 1.5 by these methods,” explains Kennedy.
