The EU monitors' report was released as NASA launches a climate satellite that will survey the ocean and atmosphere in detail never before seen.
For the first time on record, global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in a 12-month period, European climate watchdogs have announced, in what scientists called a “warning for humanity.”
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Agency (C3S) on Thursday reported an unusually hot record, measuring temperatures from February 2023 to January 2024, marking the highest global average temperature in 12 months. Recorded.
Climate change has battered the planet with storms, droughts and fires, making 2023 the hottest year on Earth in world records since 1850, as El Niño warms surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
According to C3S, the extreme event will continue until 2024, with annual temperatures rising by 1.52 degrees Celsius above 19th century standards.
But scientists said the world had not yet permanently breached the key 1.5 degree warming threshold target, measured over decades, set out in the Paris climate agreement.
In 2015, nearly 200 governments signed the unprecedented Paris Climate Change Agreement to phase out fossil fuels in the second half of this century in favor of renewable energy. The United Nations said last year that the world was not on track to meet the agreement's long-term goals, including limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Some scientists say the Paris Agreement targets can no longer realistically be met, but urge governments to act faster to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to limit overshooting. ing.
“The hottest January”
C3S said the world also experienced the hottest January on record, with extreme heat continuing to be driven by climate change.
Last month surpassed the previous warmest January in 2020 in C3S records dating back to 1950.
“Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to stop global temperatures from rising,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess.
NASA climate satellite
On Thursday, the US space agency NASA launched its latest satellite to study the world's oceans and atmosphere in more detail than ever before.
SpaceX is launching a $948 million Pace satellite that will scan the Earth daily from 676 km (420 miles) up for at least three years. PACE (short for Plankton, Aerosols, Clouds and Marine Ecosystems) is the most advanced mission ever launched to study marine biology.
“It will be an unprecedented view of our home planet,” said project scientist Jeremy Wardell.
Current Earth observation satellites can see in seven or eight colors, Werdel said. Pace displays 200 colors, allowing scientists to identify types of algae in the ocean and particles in the air. Scientists expect to start collecting data within a month or two.
The project aims to help scientists improve forecasts for hurricanes and other severe weather, gain a better understanding of the Earth's changes as temperatures rise, and more accurately predict harmful algae blooms. The purpose is
