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Copernicus have issued a statement that the first eleven days of this month registered the highest temperatures on record for this time of the year.
Prof Albert Klein Tank, director of the Met Office, said:
“As the world increasingly warms because of human-induced climate change we are bound to see periods of a month or season where the global average temperature exceeds 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels on a temporary basis. With the emerging El Nino there is a possibility that the average surface global temperature for the whole of this year or next could exceed 1.5°C for a single year.
“It is vital to understand that a single exceedance does not imply a breach of the Paris Agreement as this will need to be a long-term average. However, the more times we temporarily exceed 1.5°C the greater the chance of a permanent exceedance.”
Dr Melissa Lazenby, Lecturer in Climate Change at the University of Sussex explains:
“The world is warming as scientists have predicted and anthropogenic climate change is the reason. We have breached 1.5 degrees warming periodically this month – which means we have not breached the Paris Agreement, as that requires the average longer-term temperatures to consistently be above the 1.5 degree threshold.
“That being said, we are consistently getting closer to breaching 1.5 degrees in the long term and this should be a stern warning sign that we are heading into very warm uncharted territory. We are currently heading into an El Nino event which is a natural phenomenon where we experience warmer global temperatures on average and therefore it is no surprise we are exceeding thresholds of 1.5 degrees temporarily. We require urgent action and a significant reduction in emissions to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees in the longer term. This is just a stark reminder of how close we are getting and how serious the impacts are.”
Prof Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor, University of Oxford, said:
“The important question – Will these El Nino events become more likely (or less likely) as a result of climate change? – is one that climate scientists still can’t answer with any certainty. The question involves complex interactions involving ocean-atmosphere coupling and cloud dynamics. Current generation climate models do not have fine enough resolution to be able to model these processes sufficiently accurately.”
Prof Manoj Joshi, from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, said:
“As the world continues to warm, such months will become more frequent until in a few years they’re the new normal.
“In a few decades, unless emissions of carbon are sharply reduced, months that are 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will be regarded as cold rather than warm outliers.”
Prof Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology, University of Reading, said:
“Exceeding 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial global averages in northern hemisphere summer is a worrying milestone. These figures don’t just reflect a few days of warm weather in the UK or a small part of the world, it reflects the average temperature across the whole world. There is nowhere on earth to escape from this global heating. Every fraction of a degree of warming means significant impacts on people and communities now and in the future. Luckily, the science is very clear, and we know exactly what needs to be done to avoid the worst impacts. We just need to take those courses of action that are in keeping with our commitments.
“Each time we tip over 1.5 degrees with increasing regularity, it is a worrying sign that we are getting closer to a point of no return. This doesn’t mean we should give up, though. If we can keep average temperatures to, say, 1.6 degrees, it would lead to significantly better outcomes for millions of people than if we hit 1.7. These figures may seem like dry data, but they represent more floods, more droughts, more fires.”
Dr Paulo Ceppi, Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, said:
“This isn’t the first time global-mean warming temporarily exceeds 1.5°C, and certainly won’t be the last – but this doesn’t mean we have exceeded the Paris Agreement policy limit. On top of the long-term global warming trend, there are natural fluctuations in global temperature from month to month and year to year, and on average, global warming remains closer to 1.2°C.
“Looking to the future however, with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases, we can expect to cross the 1.5°C threshold increasingly frequently, and even permanently unless we act very rapidly to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Only once we reach net zero emissions can we expect global temperatures to approximately stabilise.”
Prof Chris Merchant, Professor in Ocean and Earth Observation, University of Reading, said:
“This excursion of global average temperature above 1.5 deg C of warming is temporary for now, but will happen increasingly often in future. It is a reminder that achieving a stable climate requires large reductions in the burning of fossil fuels. There is no negotiating with nature on this.”
Dr Richard Hodgkins, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, Loughborough University, said:
“El Niño years have always been warm years, but now they occur against a background of decade-on-decade, fossil-fuel-driven warming that has loaded the dice in favour of temperature extremes. The record temperatures seen this month bring us closer to a world of permanent heat in excess of anything human society has previously encountered. These episodes of high temperature not only nudge the dial closer and closer to the 1.5°C threshold of the Paris Agreement themselves, but they also lead to effects like forest fires, ice melting at the poles and increased power demand for cooling, all of which we see in the world at the moment, and all of which only add to heating.”
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