Global warming
For the first time in history, global warming has breached the 1.5C threshold for the entire year, according to data from the European Union’s climate monitoring service.
Under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, world leaders pledged to work to limit long-term global temperature rises to 1.5C, a threshold seen as crucial to avoiding the most damaging impacts of climate change.
Global temperatures above 1.5C for the entire year do not necessarily constitute a “breach” of the Paris Agreement – but they are still a cause for concern.
Scientists say immediate action to cut carbon emissions could still slow warming.
“An increase above [the 1.5C threshold] in an average year is significant,” said Prof Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society.
“Another setback. But we know what we have to do.”
Holding global average temperature rise to 1.5C – above pre-industrial levels, before humans started burning fossil fuels – has become a symbol of the international effort to tackle climate change.
A landmark UN report in 2018 said that the risks of climate change – such as extreme heat waves, rising sea levels and wildlife extinctions – were much higher at 2C than at 1.5C.
But data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service over the past year shows that temperatures are continuing to rise at an alarming rate, as illustrated in the graph below.
