Fresh native climate records reveals world temperatures persevering with to rise sharply | DW News

The accelerating climate crisis hasreally been hitting the headlines lately …But wait! 1.5 degrees by 2027?Recently this made the news! For the first time ever global warming hasexceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius within an entire year It was actually anticipated that thisimportant threshold would only be reached in the next few years or the next decade.But now, scientists recently published data showing that we just passed this benchmarkSo, let's actually clarify what's happening here. Have we already exceeded the key 1.5-degree limitagreed in the Paris Climate Accord for good? And why has this red line already been crossed?There is this tendency towards higher temperature..

And this is largely, um, driven by changesin greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So the CO2 and water vapor and methane and soon. And this has been the main driver for this constant warming. But superimposed by thisthere are oscillations there are fluctuations. One of those fluctuations isexceptionally high solar activity. The other is a warm weatherphenomenon, called El Nino. Translated from Spanish, ElNino means the child or the boy. It sounds harmless.But in a warming world, it's not. Last seen in 2016 it let to theworld's hottest year on record. Thats because El Nino impacts oceantemperature which in turn affects the climate..

So, the El Nino phase is also called thewarm phase because as the upwelling of cold water on the coastline of South Americaand the western Pacific is suppressed. The overall temperature in the pacific risesand also this is felt in the global average temperature in the atmosphere as well.El Nino is a natural climate cycle and is associated with changing wind patternsand higher water temperatures in the East Pacific, – so basically the ocean off thecoast of Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica. Here's a NASA illustrationfrom a previous El Nino event. Warmer waters, just several degreesabove average temperatures in the region, influence ocean currents and weatherpatterns in large parts of the world..

All of a sudden the rather wet areas in Indonesiaand Australia have a dry anomaly. And in South America you have a very wet conditions in theareas that are normally very dry. And with this pattern there's also extreme weather related.and higher temperatures in the atmosphere. How much warmer it will get duringthe current El Nino is still unclear. The good news: The phenomenon isexpected to end by spring this year. But is that a reason to relax?Unf ortunately, not! There is an analogy I like is is likea ball rolling down a slope. Um, and, and that's the, the climate change, the, theball it keep going down because there is a, there is a slope. And then on top of thisslope they are stones and uh, holes and uh,.

Branches or things that may affect the trajectoryof the ball. And so the ball bounce around different direction. And that's the El Nino, thevariation in, in the solar input, uh, volcanic eruption or all the rest. But still, after awhile, the ball will be farther down the slope. Floods in Pakistan.Wildfires in Croatian tourists centers last year. Heavy storms in Brazil in January.Heatwaves around the world. Weather extremes linked to planetaryhearting are already causing catastrophic damage to lives and economies.And that's all on top of bringing the planet closer to climate thresholds thattrigger rapid and probably irreversible changes.And I'd call them critical organs of.

The earth that are important for, for planetarystability as a whole. And examples for tipping elements are the Greenland ice sheet, which hasapproximately seven meters of sea level rise, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which has between3 to 5m of sea level rise if melted down. Other systems in danger to tipover are oral reefs and the Amazon. Recently, scientists expressed “alarm” overthe latest findings that the so-called AMOC, a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic,is about to shift due to rapid ice melt. If it were to fail, Europe wouldsee a dramatic drop in temperatures of up to 10 degrees on average.In southern hemisphere countries, warming could intensify, and in the Amazon regionthe rainy and dry seasons could be reversed.

Sea levels would rise at a speed that wouldmake it impossible for humans to adapt in time. So all these systems are now showing signs ofa beginning instability. And that warns us, basically that we should stop globalwarming as soon as we can and then get back to safe temperatures., which are on the order long term on the order of one degree.In 2015, the global community agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.A global pact to prevent potentially irreversible effects of climate change.But the Paris agreement target refers to a long-term temperature averageover a 20-to-30-year period. Breaching 1.5 once doesn't mean that fromnow on we will necessarily do so every year..

We are moving towards, that world. And weindeed have seen the first occurrence of a 12-month period where this has happened.And next year or in two years' time will be just more likely for this to happen. Andwe are, in a sense, from a climate point of view already in a 1.5 world without beingyet there in the terms of the Paris Agreement. But that doesn’t make thisnew record less alarming. Global CO2 emissions are still rising and weare burning more coal, oil and gas than ever. With these countries using most of it. At the same time investment inrenewables is accelerating. Solar, wind, green energies are being deployed atrecord rates in places like the EU and China..

But the decarbonisation of the economiesmust speed up if heads of government want to keep their promises and permanentlylimit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

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