Our climate has crossed the "dangerous" 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold generations ahead of projections.
Our climate has crossed the “dangerous” 1.5 degrees Celsius(2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal warming threshold 50 years or more ahead of long-held projections, according to data analysis by a major climate organization. Of the four major Earth temperature evaluations released for 2023 so far, Berkeley Earth is at 1.54°C, the European Meteorological Service is at 1.48°C, the World Meteorological Service is at 1.45°C and NASA is at 1.44°C. Almost all climate change impacts are happening decades, generations and even a century ahead of projections.
As recently as 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said we would not cross the 1.5°C threshold until after 2032. The IPCC’s 1.5°C Report in 2018 said that a constant rate of warming from the mid 2020s would see us exceed 1.5°C warming in 2040.
Berkeley Earth says, in 2023, every month from June to December was warmer than the previous record warm month; something never before seen in the temperature record. Almost half of the days in 2023 were warmer than 1.5°C, more than doubling the previous record. Two days in November were above 2°C, a first ever occurrence.
What’s so important about a little warming? If the average warming on Earth today of 1.54°C is the land-ocean average, then warming over land is twice that over the cool oceans — on average, 3.08°C (5.4°F). Then consider that heat extremes are many times the average, and what seems like a paltry 1.5°C warming becomes a very large number with obviously dangerous implications.
This extreme jump in temperature can no longer be altered by simply eliminating future emissions. It has been caused by current warming from prior emissions, including feedback emissions, from collapsing Earth systems and from cascading effects that amplify warming nonlinearly. In just two years in 2023 and 2024, global temperatures could rise as much as half of all excess planetary warming humanity has experienced in the last 200 years.