2024 will be the first year on record to smash a warming limit scientists warned about

By Brandon Miller and Ella Nilsen, CNN

(CNN) — New data confirms 2024 will be the hottest year on record and the first calendar year to exceed the Paris Agreement threshold — devastating news for the planet that comes as America chooses a president that has promised to undo its climate progress both at home and abroad.

Nearly all the world’s countries pledged to strive to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius in the Paris Agreement, which scientists said would prevent cascading and worsening impacts such as droughts, heat waves and catastrophic sea level rise. They warn at that level, the human-caused climate crisis — fueled by heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution — begins to exceed the ability of humans and the natural world to adapt.

Data released Wednesday by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows 2024 is “virtually certain” to shoot above that threshold.

President-elect Donald Trump, a noted climate denier, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement during his first term and has vowed to do it again in his second. But the new data makes it clear further delays in climate action from leading global economies will ensure even higher levels of warming are reached, and with it, ever worsening impacts.

“We don’t have time to stop,” Alex Scott, a climate diplomacy strategist at international think tank ECCO said Wednesday.

As climate change-fueled extreme weather is killing more people and costing economies billions of dollars each year, the climate crisis has been given top billing at major international forums like the G7 and G20.

“These are things that a Trump administration will not be able to shy away from,” Scott said.

Not only did President-elect Trump vow to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement on the campaign trail, but some former Trump officials have floated the idea of pulling the country entirely out of the United Nations treaty to tackle climate change. Doing so would end US participation in international negotiations and make it harder for future administrations to re-enter them.

It would be a more “serious” and “dramatic” step, said Alden Meyer, senior associate at climate think tank E3G and a longtime international climate expert.

Trump’s re-election will likely cast a shadow over COP29, the United Nations-backed international climate talks which kick off Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan. The summit is focused on ramping up finance to tackle the climate crisis.

Global climate negotiations are facing another whiplash moment as Americans seesaw between presidential extremes, said Meyer.

“The US has done this before and the world has gotten kind of tired of this routine,” Meyer said. “On the other hand, the US is a major player on the scene, and I think other countries would want to maintain the ability to try to re-engage it down the road.”

Meyer and other experts said major emitting countries like China and the European Union will have to step up in absence of US climate leadership on the world stage, but added there are concerns other nations will use Trump’s anti-climate stance as an excuse to weaken their own climate ambitions.

In the meantime, global temperatures are climbing. Last month was the second-warmest October, according to Copernicus, and was 1.65 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels, when humans began generating fossil fuel pollution.

Extreme weather struck in many places during the month, including Hurricane Milton striking Florida and devastating flash flooding in Spain that killed more than 200 people. Another alarming climate milestones during the month included a lack of snow atop Mt. Fuji in Japan for the first time in 130 years of record keeping.

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