This extraordinary heat spell is expected to fade as the warmer El Nino conditions fade last year, but until this year, the temperature has remained at or near recorded levels.
“Then it's 2025, when we should settle down, instead, we're still in this acceleration ladder change,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“And we seem to be trapped there. What causes this – explaining this – is not completely resolved, but it is a very worrying sign.”
In its latest announcement, Copernicus Climate Change Services said April was the second best option in its dataset, which borrowed billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.
Besides the pre-industrial level of one of the past 22 months above 1.5 degrees Celsius above 1.5 degrees Celsius, the warming restrictions employed in the Paris Agreement, there is a greater likelihood of significant and lasting climate and environmental changes.
Missed target
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Many scientists believe that this goal is no longer achievable and will be crossed within a few years.
A large number of studies by dozens of outstanding climate scientists who have not yet been reviewed have recently concluded that global warming reaches 1.36C in 2024.
Copernicus sets the current figure at 1.39c, which can reach project 1.5C in mid-2029 or earlier based on warming trends over the past 30 years.
“It's been four years now. The reality is we're going to be over 1.5 degrees,” said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium Weather Forecasting, which runs Copernicus.
“The key is not to lock in two degrees, but focus on 1.51,” climate scientists told AFP.
Julien Cattiaux, a climate scientist at the French Institute CNRS, said the 1.5C “will be beaten by 2030”, but that's not a reason to give up.
“Indeed, the numbers we're giving are shocking: the current warming rate is high. They say the number of every 10 degrees is high, but now, they're passing quickly.”
“Even with everything, we must not let this kind of action be in the way.”
“abnormal”
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Scientists agree that burning fossil fuels has driven long-term global warming to a large extent, making extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense.
But their contribution to other caloric events that may lead to this ongoing caloric event.
Experts believe that changes in global cloud patterns, aerial pollution, and the Earth's ability to store carbon in natural sinks such as forests and oceans may also cause planets to overheat.
The surge pushed 2023, then 2024 became the hottest year on record, with 2025 rising third.
“The last two years… are very good,” Burgess said.
“They are still within the boundaries or envelope range of what climate models can now predict. But we're on the top of that envelope.”
“The current warming rate has accelerated, but that's true for a long time, and I'm not willing to say that,” she said, adding that more data is needed.
Copernicus’s record dates back to 1940, but other sources of climate data, such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons, allow scientists to use further evidence from the past to expand their conclusions.
The current period may be the warmest time in the past 125,000 years, scientists say.
