2024 First Year to Pass 1.5C Global Warming Limit

Written by Mark Poynting, Erwan Rivault and Becky Dale. Published by BBC Climate.

The planet has moved a major step closer to warming more than 1.5C, new data shows, despite world leaders vowing a decade ago they would try to avoid this. This has become a powerful symbol in international climate negotiations ever since it was agreed in Paris in 2015, with many of the most vulnerable countries considering it a matter of survival.

It does not mean that the international 1.5C target has been broken, because that refers to a long-term average over decades, but it does bring us nearer to doing so as fossil fuel emissions continue to heat the atmosphere. Last year's heat is predominantly due to humanity's emissions of planet-warming gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are still at record highs.

"The world has been moving closer and closer to breaching the 1.5C barrier. When exactly we will cross the long-term 1.5C threshold is hard to predict, but we're obviously very close now," says Myles Allen of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and an author of the UN report.

Despite this uncertainty, scientists stress that humans still have control over the future climate, and sharp reductions in emissions can lessen the consequences of warming.

Read the full article from BBC Climate.