dyton mupawaenda
BRUSSELS. – Last year, Earth broke annual heat records, flirted with the globally agreed warming threshold and showed other signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency has said.
The European climate agency Copernicus said the year saw a warming of 1.48 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
That figure is just shy of the 1.5° Celsius limit the world hoped to meet in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to avoid the most severe effects of warming.
And January 2024 is on track to be so hot that, for the first time, a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5° threshold, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus. Scientists have repeatedly said that the Earth would have to warm on average by 1.5° over two or three decades for the threshold to be technically exceeded.
The 1.5 degree target “must be kept alive because lives are at risk and choices must be made,” Burgess said. “And these choices impact not you and me, but our children and our grandchildren.”
Record heat made life miserable and sometimes deadly in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year.
But scientists say global warming is also responsible for more extreme weather events, like the long drought that devastated the Horn of Africa, the torrential rains that destroyed dams and killed thousands in Libya, and the wildfires forests in Canada which have polluted the air from North America to Europe. – africanews.com
Online Reporter