Reacción a "2024 was the first year to exceed 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels"

First of all we should mention that the reports and press releases produced by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) are highly respected and influential reports, to the point that the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, regularly quotes them in his speeches on climate.   

This press release summarizes the main climate features of the year 2024, with perhaps the most relevant finding being that it was the warmest year globally since records began and the first calendar year in which the average temperature was 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level. The fact that in the Paris Agreement the signatory parties committed themselves textually to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” means that this limit that we have just exceeded in 2024 has the great symbolic value that what is being done to limit the greenhouse gas emissions causing this progressive temperature increase is clearly insufficient.   

In any case, 2024 has been very warm, both in terms of air and sea surface temperature, plus the additional contribution of the positive El Niño phase to the underlying warming trend caused by the continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The 1.5 °C or 2 °C limits set in the Paris Agreement on climate change do not refer to a single specific year, as has happened in 2024, but to the average over a certain number of years that filters out annual oscillations due to phenomena such as El Niño. What is really important is to prevent that figure from becoming a new long-term norm. In addition, this report notes the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events around the world-from severe storms and floods to heat waves, droughts and wildfires-as related to the context of climate change. In fact, the individualized study of extreme weather and climate events through attribution studies has made it possible to quantitatively estimate the increasing role of climate change in the occurrence of these phenomena.