A fire in the Amazon rainforest in September. Rising global temperatures will cause the Amazon to dry out and will lead to a rise in sea levels. AFP
A fire in the Amazon rainforest in September. Rising global temperatures will cause the Amazon to dry out and will lead to a rise in sea levels. AFP
A fire in the Amazon rainforest in September. Rising global temperatures will cause the Amazon to dry out and will lead to a rise in sea levels. AFP
A fire in the Amazon rainforest in September. Rising global temperatures will cause the Amazon to dry out and will lead to a rise in sea levels. AFP

Record-hot 2024 was first year to breach 1.5°C threshold


Gillian Duncan
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Earth’s temperature remained 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average in 2024, representing the first calendar-long breach of the milestone on record.

Copernicus, EU's climate change monitoring service, said the global temperature average of 15.10°C was 0.12°C above 2023's level, the previous warmest year. It was also 1.60°C higher than the temperature estimate for the pre-fossil fuel era, from 1850 to 1900.

Scientists said the figures suggested it was now “very likely” the world would fail to reach its 2060 global warming targets.

Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, told The National that the milestone showed humanity was “treating our planet like a credit card with no limit”.

“The annual global temperature crossing the 1.5°C mark for the first time in 2024 shows the bill is coming, which unfortunately could lead to a further increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events across the globe,” Mr Deoras said.

To breach the 2015 Paris Agreement, the average global temperature over a period of at least 20 years must exceed the temperature recorded during the pre-industrial period by at least 1.5°C, he added.

The sun rises over Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Getty Images
The sun rises over Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Getty Images

“Whilst we are yet to breach the Paris Agreement, several consecutive months since summer 2023 have been warmer by at least 1.5°C, showing how serious the problem of global warming is," he explained. "The more often 1.5°C threshold gets breached, the closer we would be to the breaching of the Paris Agreement.

“We're already seeing homes become uninsurable and disasters costing billions. This isn't about future generations any more – it's about us, today. We are on track to see new warming records getting broken, unless we immediately cut down the emission of greenhouse gases."

Another report released on Friday by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, which synthesised data from six regional climate monitoring institutes, found that the years from 2014 to 2024 were the 10 warmest on record.

“Today’s assessment from the World Meteorological Organisation proves yet again global heating is a cold, hard fact,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

The UN chief called on world governments to “act now” and submit updated national climate plans for 2025 as well as supporting those most affected by severe climate impacts.

But “individual years pushing past the 1.5-degree limit do not mean the long-term goal is shot. It means we need to fight even harder to get on track," he added.

WMO secretary general Celeste Saulo said it is “essential to recognise that every fraction of a degree of warming matters”.

She added: “Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet.”

During the first half of last year, which was the world's hottest on record, each month registered higher readings than the same month in any previous year. That led to a 13-month streak of record temperatures.

Global temperatures remained significantly above average in the second half of last year. The world set a record daily global average temperature of 17.16°C on July 22.

It was the warmest year for all continental regions, except Antarctica and Australasia, as well as for sizeable parts of the ocean, particularly the North Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean.

Around Antarctica, sea ice reached record or near-record lows during a large part of the year, while in the Arctic, the sea ice extent was relatively close to its 1991 to 2020 average until July, but fell well below average in the following months. At its annual minimum in September, levels were fifth lowest in the satellite record.

A family fills water bottles in New Delhi in May 2024. Getty Images
A family fills water bottles in New Delhi in May 2024. Getty Images

Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said he was “running out of metaphors” to explain the warming.

“The many record breaking events that we have seen over the course of the last 12 months are not statistical oddities, but rather a direct consequence of the generalised warming of our climate system,” he said. “The underlying physics is very clear. A warmer global climate produces more frequent and intense events, such as for example, heatwaves. A warmer atmosphere also holds more moisture, leading to heavier rainfall, where warmer seas amplify the potential for destructive storms."

The Paris Agreement’s long-term goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels was chosen to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, albeit with more common extreme heatwaves and drought compared with today. Under this scenario, the world is expected to exceed 1.5°C from 2030, before dropping below 1.5°C by 2060.

Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, said on Thursday that 2024’s milestone meant it was “very likely” the world would miss the target.

“Given that we have had our first calendar year of 1.5ºC, there is an extremely high likelihood that we will overshoot the long-term average of 1.5ºC and the Paris Agreement limit," she said.

“However, my personal opinion is that this is an extraordinarily important policy that all countries around the world have committed to, so I don’t think it’s fair to say the Paris Agreement is dead. And I think if we do overshoot 1.5ºC, which has a high probability associated with it, the next target does not automatically deflect to 2ºC, but the next target becomes 1.51ºC. And the sooner we get to net-zero emissions, the sooner we will stabilise our climate and reduce the potential impacts of future extreme events.”

A worker collects mud at Serbia's Lake Rusanda, which dried up for the first time in recorded history during a prolonged heatwave 2024. Getty Images
A worker collects mud at Serbia's Lake Rusanda, which dried up for the first time in recorded history during a prolonged heatwave 2024. Getty Images

Worsening warming

According to the Carbon Brief, if warming exceeds 1.5°C beyond 2100 and peaks at 1.89°C, sea levels will rise by 20cm at more than 70 per cent of the Earth's coastlines.

If warming continues to rise, peaking at 2.69°C by 2100, the world would pass a catastrophic point of no return, with the loss of all ice sheets, sea level rises of several metres, extreme heatwaves occurring most years and the drying out of the Amazon rainforest.

Warming of 4°C would result in unprecedented heatwaves, severe drought and major flooding, creating millions of global climate refugees. Wide-scale adaptation to global sea rise would also be necessary.

Adla Massoud contributed to this report from the United Nations

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe

Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010

Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille

Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm

Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year

Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”

Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners

TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013 

Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions

There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.

1 Going Dark

A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.

2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers

A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.

3. Fake Destinations

Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.

4. Rebranded Barrels

Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.

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Quick pearls of wisdom

Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”

Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.” 

The smuggler

Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. 
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.

Khouli conviction

Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.

For sale

A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.

- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico

- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000

- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950

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Updated: January 10, 2025, 6:27 PM`