‘The future is in our hands’ scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold
Last year was the warmest on record, the first to breach a symbolic threshold, and brought with it deadly impacts like flooding and drought, scientists have said.
Two new datasets found 2024 was the first calendar year when average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale.
The record heat has not only has real-world implications, as it contributed to deadly flooding in Spain and vicious drought in places like Zambia in southern Africa.
It is also highly symbolic.
Countries agreed in the landmark Paris Agreement to limit warming ideally to 1.5C, because after that the impacts would be much more dangerous.
The news arrives as California battles “hell on earth” wildfires, suspected to have been exacerbated by climate change.
And it comes as experts warn support for the Paris goals is “more fragile than ever” – with Donald Trump and the Argentinian president poised to row back on climate action.
What caused 2024 record heat – and is it here to stay?
Friends of the Earth called today’s findings from both the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service and the Met Office “deeply disturbing”.
The “primary driver” of heat in the last two years was climate change from human activity, but the temporary El Nino weather phenomenon also contributed, they said.
The breach in 2024 does not mean the world has forever passed 1.5C of warming – as that would only be declared after several years of doing so, and warming may slightly ease this year as El Nino has faded.
But the world is “teetering on the edge” of doing so, Copernicus said.
Prof Piers Forster, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, called it a “foretaste of life at 1.5C”.
Dr Gabriel Pollen, Zambia’s national coordinator for disasters, said “no area of life and the economy is untouched” by the country’s worst drought in more than 100 years.
Six million people face starvation, critical hydropower has plummeted, blackouts are frequent, industry is “decimated”, and growth has halved, he said.
Paris goal ‘not obsolete’
Scientists were at pains to point out it is not too late to curb worse climate change, urging leaders to maintain and step up climate action.
Professor Forster said temporarily breaching 1.5C “does not mean the goal is obsolete”, but that we should “double down” on slashing greenhouse gas emissions and on adapting to a hotter world.
The Met Office said “every fraction of a degree” still makes a difference to the severity of extreme weather.
The California fires were whipped up by strong, dry winds and likely worsened by climate change. Pic: Reuters
Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo added: “The future is in our hands: swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate”.
Climate action is ‘economic opportunity’
Copernicus found that global temperatures in 2024 averaged 15.10°C, the hottest in records going back to 1850, making it 1.60°C above the pre-industrial level during 1850-1900.
The Met Office’s data found 2024 was 1.53C above pre-industrial levels.
The figures are global averages, which smooth out extremes from around the world into one number. That is why it still might have felt cold in some parts of the world last year.
Greenpeace campaigner Philip Evans said as “the world’s most powerful climate denier” Donald Trump returns to the White House, others must “take up the mantle of global climate leadership”.
The UK’s climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the UK has been working with other countries to cut global emissions, as well as greening the economy at home.
“Not only is this crucial for our planet, it is the economic opportunity of the 21st century… tackling the climate crisis while creating new jobs, delivering energy security and attracting new investment into the UK.”
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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