The Accelerating Pace of Climate Change
by Jose Luis Gallego, environmental communicator (@ecogallego)
The scientists who monitor the evolution of the climate crisis issue repeated and insistent warnings in every report they publish. Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) tell us time and again that global temperatures are not only rising but doing so at a faster pace than ever before. In its latest research study, the WMO rings the alarm bells even louder, describing the current state of global warming as “unprecedented” and worthy of a “red alert”.
According to records of weather stations worldwide, the warming caused by humans is increasing at a pace of 0.26ºC per decade, the fastest in history. In addition to being the hottest year on record, 2023 also set “unprecedented” records with regard to other climate change indicators, such as rising sea levels, the loss of arctic sea ice and glacier retreat, ocean acidification, and damage caused by extreme weather events, just to name a few.
According to WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, “last year we experienced a situation that goes far beyond an unprecedented acceleration in rising temperatures. What we witnessed in 2023 is cause for great concern and should sound a red alert around the world.” She is joined by other voices in the scientific community who demand a greater international commitment to decarbonizing the global economy and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
In 2020, the IPCC calculated a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatons (500,000 million tons) of CO2 for a chance of staying within long-term 1.5°C warming as established by the Paris Agreement. Four years later, this budget has been slashed to less than half, leaving us with only 200 gigatons. At this rate, we will have no margin left in just three years.
In the meantime, climate change is continuously shattering records. Copernicus, the European Union’s Climate Change Service, recently announced that June 2024 was the hottest June globally since recordkeeping began. The average surface air temperature was 16.66ºC, representing an increase of 0.67ºC compared to the reference period (1991–2020). It is also 0.14ºC higher than the temperature in June 2023, which held the record thus far.
If we look back using the Copernicus data, the temperature this past June was 1.5ºC above the June average estimated for the pre-industrial reference period (1850–1900), making this the twelfth consecutive month in which the temperature exceeded the 1.5ºC threshold established by the Paris Agreement.
Finally, the average global temperature of the past twelve months, from July 2023 to June 2024, is the highest ever recorded, with an increase of 0.76ºC compared to the average of the 1991–2020 period and 1.64ºC higher than the pre-industrial average of 1850–1900.
Urgent measures are needed to mitigate the climate emergency we are currently in. Seeing how fossil fuel emissions still comprise 70% of the total global GHG emissions, all reports call for an immediate halt on the use of gas, oil, and coal as primary energy sources and a much faster-paced transition to renewable energies.
For UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the time has come for fossil fuel companies to “invest their massive profits” in this transition rather than in “distorting the truth, deceiving the public, and sowing doubt” about what is actually happening. In his speech this past World Environment Day (June 5th), Guterres went even further: “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”
In light of all this, hopes are now pinned on the next climate summit (COP29), which will be held this coming November in Baku, Azerbaijan.