2024 was the warmest May since measurements began. Not only that: it is in fact the 12th consecutive month in which temperatures were the highest ever recorded, and the eleventh in which values exceeded a degree and a half above those of the pre-industrial era. The alarm comes from data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and has pushed the Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres to ask member states for a more decisive commitment on the climate front. A final push, necessary according to many experts to try in extremism to reach the objectives set by the Paris Agreement: to keep global warming within one and a half degrees, a climate “tipping point” which according to the most recent forecasts we already risk exceeding by 2034.
The May of records
The global averages recorded in May 2024 by the Copernicus Climate Change Service were 0.6 degrees above those of the twenty-year period 1991-2020, and 1.52 degrees above those of 1850-1900, the reference period for the pre-industrial era. Looking at the last year, in which 11 out of 12 months broke previous records, the averages were 0.75 degrees above those of 1991-2020, and 1.63 above those of the pre-industrial era.
The World Meteorological Organization's Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, published in recent days, calculates that at this rate, there is an 80 percent probability that average temperatures in one of the next four years will temporarily exceed one and a half degrees above above pre-industrial ones, and a 47% probability that the averages for the entire period 2024-2028 will remain stably above this threshold. A symbolic bar, but which would still mean a step forward towards exceeding the target set by the Paris agreements (which is calculated on thirty-year averages, and not annual ones).
The point of no return
A threshold considered by climatologists as an authentic tipping point for the Earth's climate, capable of triggering irreversible changes on the surface of our planet. And which in recent years seems to be getting ever closer: in 2015, when the agreements were signed, it was expected that in the absence of interventions to drastically reduce emissions it would be achieved by 2045, but the most recent analyzes by the Copernicus Climate Change Service indicate that we are currently on course to surpass the goal already by 2034.
Five years left for decarbonisation
Another document published in recent days and based on Copernicus data is the “Indicators of Global Climate Change” report, and reveals that global warming linked to human activities is currently proceeding at a rate of 0.26 degrees per decade, the fastest from the beginning of the measurements. Given the speed with which we are causing temperatures to rise, the report calculates that the remaining carbon budget, i.e. the amount of CO2 we can emit before it irreversibly pushes us to exceed a degree and a half above pre-industrial temperatures, is now equivalent to just 200 gigatons. A quantity that at today's rate is enough for just five years.
“We live in unprecedented times, but we also have unprecedented capabilities to monitor the climate, and this can help us act in a coordinated way,” comments Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “This string of months with record temperatures will unfortunately be remembered as relatively mild in the future, but if we manage to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within a few years, we may be able to return to these 'mild' temperatures by the end of century”. The alternative, obviously, is to get used to living for a long time in an Earth with temperatures far above those we have known in the past.