1.5 Celsius – a Vital Threshold

2024 will remain the first year in recorded history in which the planet's average temperatures exceeded the internationally agreed global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius

Corina Cristea, 07.02.2025, 13:22

2024 will remain the first year in recorded history in which the planet’s average temperatures exceeded the internationally agreed global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era, before humans began burning fossil fuels that emit CO2 on a large scale. The confirmation comes from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and should be seen as a wake-up call, because consistently exceeding this threshold for 10-20 years could make the difference between a habitable planet or not. 2024 was also the warmest year in history.

Mircea Duțu, PhD, president of the Ecological University of Bucharest, told us:

“Every month from January to June 2024 was warmer than the previous one, and a new record for average daily temperature was reached on July 22, 2024, with 17.16°C. Proof that climate disruption is relentless, the last ten years have all been the warmest on record. The main driver of overheating lies in the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which reached 422 parts per million last year due to the use of fossil fuels. Therefore, the symbolic 1.5 degrees Celsius bar set by the Paris Agreement has been passed. With an average temperature of 15.1 degrees C, this means a difference of 1.6°C compared to the reference period 1850-1900, with the clarification, however, that the reference refers to a long-term trend. Such an average towards becoming stable should be observed over a period of at least 20 years.”

196 countries are signatories to the Paris Agreement, which also stipulates that countries must halve carbon emissions by 2030 to reach the 2050 target of zero. For now, the heat continued to contribute to the intensification of cyclones, heat waves and other extreme weather phenomena around the world. The heat claimed victims during the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in June, but also in Mexico, Thailand, India and Greece. Four million people in West and Central Africa needed humanitarian aid after historic floods, which resulted in more than 1,500 deaths, while Europe, especially Spain, also faced devastating floods. Major hurricanes hit the Caribbean region and typhoons caused havoc in Asia, especially in the Philippines. Drought severely affected large areas of the Americas, causing massive fires even in the Amazon rainforest. And in southern Africa, 26 million people are threatened with famine, according to the World Food Program. The leading scientific network in the field claims that almost all major natural disasters in 2024 were intensified by the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions produced by humanity. Temperatures were also intensified by the El Niño phenomenon, a climate pattern that brings higher temperatures and then gives way to its slightly cooler and wetter equivalent, La Niña. The consequences were not long in coming. Exceptionally high costs were recorded last year as a result of natural disasters aggravated by climate change. We are talking about $140 billion in damages.

Again, Mircea Duțu:

“The Earth is experiencing a fever that seems unstoppable and surprising in its consistency. After the extinction of El Niño in June and in anticipation of La Niña in the fall, a decrease in temperatures was predictable. But this did not happen and is not expected to happen under the expected evolution conditions. La Niña was late in intervening and, in any case, it is worth noting that we are on unknown ground. For millions of years, the planet has not recorded such an amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so that for at least 2000 years the speed of climate warming has not been so rapid. The additional fever surge of two years ago is surprising. Even in a general context of climate warming, even after the passage of an intense El Niño, the temperature remains abnormally high.”

As the average global temperature increases, exceeding the 1.5°C threshold in a single year becomes a critical signal that indicates a future in which such values could be increasingly frequent. What is there to expect in 2025?

Professor Mircea Duțu continues:

“The answer will come mainly from the state of the planetary ocean. 2025 should be in the top 3 of the warmest years, undoubtedly cooler than 2023 and 2024. Last December, a decrease in sea surface temperature was already observed. In the following months, it will probably remain in neutral conditions, with minimal warm and cold anomalies in the equatorial Pacific.”

Beyond material losses, researchers estimate that, if dramatic and immediate measures are not taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could directly cause over 2.3 million additional heat-related deaths in 854 European cities by the end of the century.