This year’s average global temperature is expected to rival 2024’s record-breaking heat, Canadian officials said Wednesday, underlining humanity’s narrowing window to hit an international target intended to help avert some of climate change’s most serious effects.
“If you look at the scientific literature, the window is closing very rapidly,” said Bill Merryfield, a climate scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
It’s expected to be 1.45 C warmer this year than it was in the late 19th century — and it’s virtually certain to be hotter than any year before 2023, the federal scientists said.
The forecast comes just days after 2024 was declared the warmest calendar year on record. The World Meteorological Organization said it beat out the previous record, in 2023, and surpassed the benchmark of 1.5 C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures for the first time.
Countries have agreed to try to keep the increase in temperature below the 1.5 C mark and well below 2 C over the long term in a bid to prevent some serious effects of human-caused climate change, driven by planet-warming fossil-fuel emissions.
The threshold is measured in decades, not a single year. So, while the threshold is not broken because of last year’s record, Merryfield warned: “We’re almost there.”
“It would require reductions in emissions that are extremely rapid in order to avoid it, is what the current studies are showing.”
Scientists say every bit of warming matters and mitigation efforts are important whether or not the threshold has been breached. Even with warming below that proposed limit, Canada has acutely felt the impact of climate change as sea levels rise, heat waves intensify and wildfires worsen in severity.
The record warmth of 2023 and 2024 was boosted by El Niño, a climate pattern tied to shifting warm waters in the Pacific Ocean. This year’s forecast of rivalling warmth is expected to come despite the cooling influence of a weak La Niña, El Niño’s opposite.
While the forecast released Wednesday has a global scope, Merryfield indicated Canada’s average temperature was likely to be warmer than normal. Areas in the country’s northwest may be cooler than that because of the influence of La Niña in the first half of the year, he said.
Canada is warming about twice as fast as the global average, and the Arctic, in particular, is warming even faster.
— With files from The Associated Press.