Has the Paris Agreement threshold been crossed? No not necessarily. Even though the global average temperature in July was about 1.5°C higher than during the pre-industrial era, the most ambitious limit of the Paris agreement has not necessarily been reached, the latter referring to the climate change over decades.
“The month (of July) is estimated to have been around 1.5°C warmer than the average for 1850-1900”, noted Copernicus in its latest bulletin, which confirms that July 2023 was the hottest month ever. recorded on Earth.
A threshold already exceeded punctually
However, this is not the first time that this threshold has been reached or exceeded on an occasional basis. In December 2015, just as countries around the world were coming together to deliver the Paris Agreement, the world experienced average temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for a few days. . The cyclic phenomenon El Niño, which tends to increase temperatures, was then close to its peak.
The threshold was also reached or exceeded during the winter or early spring in 2016, 2020 and already earlier in the year 2023. The next few years also promise to reach records under the combined effect of greenhouse gases greenhouses generated by human activity and the El Niño phenomenon, which is making a comeback.
Calculations spread “over periods of 20 or 30 years”
The Paris Agreement signed in 2015 aims to keep “the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the increase in temperature to 1 5°C above pre-industrial levels”, before the massive use of fossil fuels strongly warmed the climate.
But one cannot conclude from recent episodes that this most ambitious limit has already been reached. “It should be emphasized that the limits of 1.5°C and 2°C set in the Paris agreement are limits for the average temperature of the planet over periods of 20 or 30 years, which are usually used to define the climate,” recalls Copernicus.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) estimates that there is a 66% chance that the annual average global temperature will temporarily exceed pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5°C for at least one year between 2023 and 2027. .
“This does not mean that in the next five years we will exceed the level of 1.5°C specified in the Paris agreement, because this agreement refers to long-term warming over many years”, also clarified in early July Chris Hewitt, head of climate services at the WMO. “However, this is a new alarm signal,” he said.