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The world exceeded 1.5C of warming last year for the first time, leading international agencies said, as an “extraordinary” rise in global average temperatures fueled fears that climate change is faster than expected.

Europe’s Copernicus observation agency confirmed on Friday that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, with average surface temperatures 1.6C above preindustrial levels after greenhouse gas emissions hit new highs. .

It was the first calendar year that average temperatures exceeded the target of the 2015 Paris accord to limit warming since pre-industrial times to below 2C and preferably to 1.5C.

“Honestly, I’ve run out of metaphors to explain the warming we’re seeing,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo.

He added that the series of climate disasters last year – from floods to heatwaves – is not a statistical anomaly, but is clearly linked to climate change driven by the increase in carbon dioxide and methane.

Copernicus said the years from 2015 to 2024 will be the 10 hottest on record.

The coordinated release of 2024 data from six climate monitoring organizations comes just days before president-elect Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the US from the Paris accord to tackle climate change in the climate.

Other businesses around the world are also starting to weaken climate targets and scale back green efforts.

“Hitting 1.5C is like watching the first domino fall in a devastating chain reaction,” said Patrick McGuire, a climate researcher at Reading university. “We are playing with fire. Every fraction of a degree unleashes stronger storms, longer droughts and deadlier heat waves.

The latest data does not represent a definite violation of the Paris agreement, whose targets refer to temperature averages measured over two decades.

But concerns that climate change is intensifying are fueled by evidence that the world’s oceans are cooling more slowly than expected following the natural warming effects of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean.

What is “most surprising is how much warmer 2024 and most of 2023 will be”, added Tim Lenton, chair of climate change and earth system science at Exeter university.

“This is a clear signal of climate destabilization – a less stable system undergoing more and more continuous changes.”

Human-caused climate change is the main cause of extreme air and sea temperatures in 2024, Copernicus said, while other factors such as El Niño, which officially ended in June, also contributed .

This year is expected to be cooler than 2024, partly due to the reduction of the effect of El Niño, which is cyclical. The start of a weak La Niña cooling cycle confirmed on Thursday by the US weather agency.

But Samantha Burgess, of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, says it could still rank among the three warmest on record.

“We now live in a very different climate than our parents and grandparents experienced,” he said, adding that it may have been 125,000 years since the temperature was as warm as it is today.

Copernicus said that 2024 will be the hottest year on the books for all regions of the continent, except Antarctica and Australasia, as well as for “large parts” of the world’s oceans, especially the northern Atlantic, Indian and western Pacific oceans.

Global atmospheric water levels in 2024 will reach record levels, 5 percent above the 1991-2020 average, fueling “unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rain events, causing distress home to millions of people”, said Burgess.

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