New data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms 2024 is on track to become the hottest year on record, surpassing the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold set by the Paris Agreement, CNN reports.
This devastating news comes as Donald Trump, a climate change denier, begins his second term as US President, having promised to undo existing climate progress both domestically and internationally.
The Paris Agreement, which nearly all countries have signed, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius will trigger cascading and worsening impacts like droughts, heat waves, and catastrophic sea level rise, exceeding humanity’s and the natural world’s ability to adapt.
Trump’s re-election casts a long shadow over the upcoming COP29 climate talks, which commence in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday. The summit will focus on increasing financial commitments to combat climate change, a task made significantly more difficult by the US’s anticipated withdrawal from global climate efforts.
During his first term, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement and has pledged to do so again. Some former Trump officials have even floated the idea of a complete US withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, effectively ending US participation in international climate negotiations.
The news comes as the world witnesses the devastating impacts of climate change firsthand. October 2024 was the second-warmest October on record, with global temperatures reaching 1.65 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Extreme weather events, including Hurricane Milton in Florida and devastating flash floods in Spain, have underscored the urgency of climate action.
The lack of snow atop Mount Fuji in Japan for the first time in 130 years of record keeping serves as another alarming indicator of the accelerating impacts of climate change.
