The temperature threshold that could lead to extremely dangerous climate chaos for the planet was surpassed in early June, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
As reported by AP on June 15, this announcement indicated that it was the first time global surface air temperatures rose 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels during the summer.
1.5 degrees Celsius is a critical threshold referenced in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which nations have committed to work to prevent.
People march to protect the planet by pretending to perform CPR on Earth during the United Nations COP27 climate summit on November 16, 2022, in Egypt – (Photo: AP).
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Program (which includes six services, among them the Copernicus Climate Change Service), stated that this situation is temporary, and it does not mean we have violated the limits set by the Paris Agreement. A true violation would require a phenomenon lasting much longer, such as several decades instead of just a few weeks.
However, 11 days of exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is significant enough to highlight the importance of scientists closely monitoring the health of the planet. Temperature spikes exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius typically occur very briefly during winter or spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
“We need to monitor the situation to understand what this means for the upcoming summer,” Burgess emphasized.
Meanwhile, climate scientist Andrew Weaver from Victoria University (Australia) remarked: “I feel like I’m watching a global shipwreck in slow motion.”
This particular phenomenon is especially concerning as, at the same time in early June, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States announced that El Nino has arrived, replacing La Nina, which has dominated for the past three years.
El Nino and La Nina are the two “phases” of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. The world has continued to warm despite the cooling effects of La Nina over the last three years, so El Nino—bringing warming effects—may pose a double threat.
Researcher Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany) stated that data from Copernicus “serves as a reminder of how close we are to the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming limit.” According to him, exceeding that limit would pose significant risks for humanity, as well as climate instability and ecosystem loss.
Previously, many scientists warned that breaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold could lead to what is termed “climate chaos,” characterized by extreme weather events that no longer follow seasonal patterns, making them hard to predict and leading to numerous ecological disasters.
