2024 climate scientists predictions for global warming

That suggests there will be no imminent slowdown in a surge of global warmth that has supercharged the decades-long trend tied to fossil fuel emissions.

It could be enough to, for the first time on an annual basis, push average planetary temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial, 19th century levels, according to Britain’s Met Office. The planet came closer than ever to that dreaded threshold in recent months, providing a first glimpse of a world where sustained levels of that heat would fuel new weather extremes.

But such climate trends can be difficult to predict with precision. After all, at the start of 2023, scientists predicted the year would end as one of the planet’s warmest on record. They didn’t expect it to set so many new precedents — and by record-wide margins.

“The fact that we are in uncharted territory, we don’t actually know what will happen next,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

El Niño is known to raise planetary temperatures by as much as a few tenths of a degree Celsius, a decent margin for a globally averaged statistic. That’s because it’s associated with warmer-than-average surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and those waters release heat and steam into the atmosphere.

El Niño typically lasts a year or less, peaking during the winter months and then fading in the spring. While scientists say no two El Niño events are exactly alike, each one brings some predictability to global climate patterns like few other planetary phenomena.

The current El Niño, which began in June, is considered strong and could peak as a historically potent episode some time in the coming weeks or months. It could be on par with a strong El Niño that began in early 2015, peaked that December, and faded by June 2016, on the way boosting 2016 to record warm global warmth.

If that pattern holds true this time, that could mean record warmth that has persisted over the past six months surges even higher in the first half of 2024.