“Climate battle already lost?” April scorches, marking hottest trend since 1940

Last month marked the continuation of an alarming trend, as April became the hottest April ever recorded. This is part of an 11-month sequence where each month has successively set a new global temperature record.

On Wednesday, May 8, the European Union’s climate change monitoring agency reported in its monthly summary that starting from June 2023, every month has been the warmest of that month on record when compared to previous years.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the Earth’s average temperature over the last 12 months reached the highest level ever recorded. Specifically, it was 1.61 degrees Celsius warmer than the average during the pre-industrial period from 1850-1900.

This record-breaking streak has been verified using C3S’s extensive dataset that dates back to 1940, along with other historical climate data, confirming that the recent April surpassed all previous records for the month.

The primary driver behind these rising temperatures is identified as the emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion. Additionally, the recent El Niño event, which typically warms the surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, has also contributed to higher global temperatures.

This pattern of extreme temperatures has sparked concerns among scientists about whether human actions have pushed the Earth’s climate system to a critical tipping point.

Julien Nicolas, a senior climate scientist at C3S, quoted by AFP, reflected on the possibility of a fundamental shift in the climate system due to these unprecedented changes.

Moreover, last month’s extreme weather, including a deadly heatwave in the Sahel linked to thousands of deaths, has been directly attributed to climate change by scientists.

Experts are now sounding the alarm that Earth is dangerously close to surpassing the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University, expressed to AFP her belief that the battle to stay below this threshold may already be lost. She emphasized the urgency of striving to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius and aggressively reducing emissions.

While technically, the global average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius pertains to an average over decades, some experts argue that achieving this target is becoming increasingly unrealistic.