For a whole year, the planet has shown us what 1.5 degrees of global warming can mean: heatwaves, wildfires and floods across the world. This is the limit to prevent things from getting even worse.

It's slowly becoming clear what this threshold might feel like: for the first time, the planet has been 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer over the past twelve months than it was before humans began heating the climate through the mass burning of fossil fuels. According to the Earth observation programme Copernicus, the limit has now been breached between February 2023 and January 2024. 2023 alone, quite possibly the warmest year in around 100,000 years, had still fallen just a small temperature step below this mark. The reason, of course, is climate change, but also the weather phenomenon El Niño, which has been affecting global temperatures particularly since autumn. 

By Linda Fischer, Philip-Johann Moser and Elena Erdmann

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