Despite three years of La Niña, global temperatures have started rising again. This year, the world will experience an El Niño, and temperatures will rise as they always do during El Niños. The chart shows the temperature anomaly relative to the 1901-2000 average. The years from 1850 to 1900 were on average something like 0.2 degrees cooler, so a 1.5 degrees increase above pre-industrialisation temperatures would be reached when the red bars reach 1.3 degrees C on the chart. Note the LOESS smoothing and its steady and inexorable rise.
The last El Niño peak was in 2016, with the anomaly reaching 1.14 degrees C. Temperatures are rising by roughly 0.2 degrees C per decade, so a temporary El Niño peak of 1.3 degrees C above the 1901-2000 average in 2024 is plausible. (The rise between the 1998 and 2016 El Niños was 0.44 degrees C). And that would mean we would have (temporarily) breached the 1.5 degree guardrail for the first time in recorded history.
Temperatures won't stop rising until CO2 emissions fall to zero or close to that, though we might get a temporary respite if methane emissions are slashed. However, both CO2 and CH4 emissions continue to rise.
Too little is being done to prevent catastrophe.
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| Source: NOAA |
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