By Marco Lopez, Editor-in-Chief – Climate Spotlight
Global warming and its impacts are unfolding at unprecedented rates as our planet continues to experience record-breaking temperatures driven by greenhouse gas emissions. 2024 was no exception. As urgency for policymakers to step up efforts to curb climate change continues to rise, so is the frequency of the climate impacts anticipated by scientists for years.
Here is a look at what the most recent science on climate change suggests about our reality.
Is the 1.5°C Goal Breached?
No, not yet. While the world recorded 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures for pretty much all of 2024, that goal set by the Paris Agreement has not been breached, according to the best-known interpretation of the goal. Despite this, a study published in Nature Geoscience last November suggests that the globe has already warmed to 1.48°C in 2023.
Scientists typically measure today’s temperature using a baseline temperature average for the period of 1850 to 1990—this metric puts the world at 1.3°C of warming. But the researchers who worked on this study dialed back the baseline to include pre-industrial temperature data spanning from the year 13 to 1700. This puts the current warming at at least 1.48°C.
The breach of the Paris Agreement threshold for one year does not suggest failure of that pivotal objective—a measurement of over 1.5°C for a period of 30-plus years would indicate a breach according to the global consensus.
Ocean Warming
The world is currently experiencing the fourth global coral bleaching event. Increased ocean temperatures are causing scientists to fear the worst for coral reefs. Warming in the Atlantic Ocean could cause a key current system to break down, which could result in a ripple effect of failing ecosystems.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) takes warm waters from the tropics to the Northern Atlantic, reducing the intensity of winters in Eurasia for centuries. Research from 2018 showed that the AMOC has weakened significantly since the 1950s.
A study published in February 2024 in the journal Science Advances suggests this current system could be closer to a critical slowdown than previously anticipated.
The recovery of coral reefs depends largely on temperature decreases in order for zooxanthellae—the lifegiving organisms that reside on reefs—to return.
Extreme Weather
Warming oceans are also fueling stronger Atlantic storms and causing those systems to violently and rapidly intensify. In 2024, we saw some storms jumping from category one to three in a matter of hours.
In October 2024, Hurricane Milton grew from a tropical storm to the second-most powerful system forming in the Mexican Gulf on record, battering Florida’s west coast.
Growing evidence suggests that this phenomenon is also being observed in other oceans globally.
Forests and Wildfires
Drying waterways and sapping moisture from forests is another impact of global warming being observed by scientists. These arid conditions are creating larger and hotter wildfires—ranging from the US West Coast to Canada, across the Amazon to Southern Europe, and the Russian Far East.
This is impacting the carbon storage capacity of these natural carbon sinks, resulting in more carbon going into the atmosphere. Research published in Nature Climate Change in October 2024 calculates that 13% of deaths associated with toxins from wildfire smoke were attributed to climate change.
The paper states, “The most substantial influence of climate change on fire mortality occurred in South America, Australia, and Europe, coinciding with decreased relative humidity, and increased air temperatures in boreal forests.”
In 2024, Brazil’s Amazon saw the worst and most widespread drought since records began in 1950. River levels tanked to all-time lows as infernos pierced through the rainforest. According to one finding last year, between 10 to 47 percent of the Amazon will face combined impacts from heat and drought caused by climate change.
This could push the Amazon past a tipping point where the jungle is no longer able to produce the adequate moisture to hydrate its own trees, transforming that dense forest into a degraded one, riddled with sandy savannas instead of abundant food and medicine trees.
A July 2024 study found that forests appear to be suffering globally. It determined that forests are failing to absorb as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as in the past. The paper suggests this is due largely to the Amazon droughts and wildfires that ravaged Canada’s tundra in 2024. A record amount of CO2, that would have otherwise been stored in these forest ecosystems, instead entered the atmosphere.
In December 2024, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that the Arctic tundra—an area that has acted as a carbon sink for millennia—is now releasing more carbon than it stores due to wildfires.
