New global warming records on the way, warns EU climate change service

By Selen Valente

BRUSSELS (AA) - With 2024 set to be the hottest year on record, new temperature records are expected in the near future, warned head of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service on Wednesday.

Copernicus data says last year was the hottest on record, with the global average temperature increase reaching the 1.5°C threshold of the Paris Climate Agreement for the first time.

"The fundamental threat that we are facing is the fact that the climate we are experiencing now is completely different from the climate in which we grew up, the climate of our fathers and grandparents and older generations. So the entire society needs to adapt to a climate that is fundamentally different," Copernicus' Carlo Buontempo told Anadolu.

Emphasizing that this situation affects all areas of natural systems, Buontempo said: "We see changes in the water cycle. We see changes in agriculture. We see changes in our own health, with heat-related mortality going up by 30% in the last 20 years in Europe. So this is a fundamental shift, and the sooner we grasp the immensity of this shift and start to use the knowledge, the data, the insight that we have about the climate, the better we'll be prepared and we'll be able to cope with this change."

- 'We are bound to see new record'

On what to expect in 2025, he said: "The impact of El Nino, which certainly played a role at the beginning of the year in warming up of the climate system, that impact is not going to be there, necessarily in 2025 and because of that, it's possible that the 2025 one be as warm as 2024, we don't know yet. What is certain is that, on average, the temperature of the next few years will be higher. So we are bound to see new record. We are bound to see new hottest month, new hottest years in the years to come."

Commenting on possible extreme natural events in the summer or winter of 2025, he said: "We cannot predict when the next floods or the next heat wave will happen, necessarily, but we can sort of have an educated guess on the balance of probability on how certain kind of event may become more likely to occur."

- 'We need to get prepared'

"Heat waves is an obvious example. We have seen record breaking temperature, an incredible large fraction of the global surface experiencing extreme heat waves, or extreme, extreme heat stress, to say better. And this is bound to happen. You know, more widely with heat wave lasting longer and being more intense than the past, we don't know when, where or when the next heat wave will hit, but we should get prepared, because it will hit some parts of the globe and will become more intense, longer on average, than those we have seen in the past," said Buontempo.

Stating that another example is the increase in water vapor, he explained: "As the temperature goes up, so does the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This means that some extreme events, in particular flooding, are likely to become more intense. Events associated with heavy rainfall – where large amounts of rain occur in a short period – are expected to become more intense as well."

- 'I think this is a shift that the entire society needs to do'

On actions people can take to fight climate change, Buontempo said: "I think this is a shift that the entire society needs to do, from how our houses are insulated or how we change our habits to deal with warmer temperatures and from the time we go shopping or to our personal preference in terms of holidays to what we eat to how we travel and so on. And now we are, a year after just with a new record, a very significant record. For the first time, we have an annual year passing the 1.5 degrees anomaly with respect to pre-industrial, this is the same number mentioned in the Paris Agreement, and this is, I think, from a psychological point of view, quite important."

*Writing by Asiye Latife Yilmaz in Istanbul