Climate crisis: global warming above 1.5 degrees: hot, hotter, normal

Climate change hardly seems to arouse people’s minds anymore. Unless the home has just been flooded for several days and the water has not only destroyed the interior, but also caused significant damage to the building structure. In Central Europe, people have so far experienced a summer that is too wet rather than too hot. The news from the EU climate change service Copernicus that June 2024 was the hottest June ever on a global average is difficult to sympathize with from a local perspective.

June 2024 not only continues the trend of the hottest months since records began, which has now been going on for a year. It also makes full use of the twelve months in which the mark set in Paris in 2015 of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming compared to pre-industrial times (1850 to 1900) was exceeded. Averaged over the last twelve months, it was already 1.64 degrees warmer. Less than ten years have passed between setting the goal and missing the goal.

nd.DieWoche – our weekly newsletter

With our weekly newsletter nd.DieWoche look at the most important topics of the week and read them Highlights our Saturday edition on Friday. Get your free subscription here.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It cannot yet be said that the bar has been broken with the twelve-month record. For this to happen, the temperature level would have to continue for an even longer period of time. There is currently hope that with the end of the El Niño phenomenon, global temperatures, including on the extremely heated sea surfaces, will fall again. After all, sea temperatures are no longer setting new heat records every day, as was the case over the past 15 months. Consistently hot is good news compared to getting hotter.

Now we can stare with fear at the climate research measurements and hope that the more than 1.5 degrees of global warming was just an outlier and does not mean a failure of international climate policy. But you can also look at the constantly growing content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which the observatory of the US Institute for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA) on the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa is constantly recording. The carbon dioxide content is now more than 100 millionths higher than when measurements began in 1958 – and is rising faster and faster. It should be obvious that more greenhouse gases mean more global warming in a simple cause-and-effect system; Feedback mechanisms do the rest.

But just as hot no longer feels as hot as it once did, addressing the climate crisis is no longer as high on the agenda. According to a survey by the European Investment Bank, the generation under 30 is currently less informed about the causes and consequences of climate change than the over-30 generation. At least the majority gave correct answers here. What was far less known to all those surveyed was that thermal insulation of buildings and a lower speed limit can be measures against global warming.

#ndstays – Get active and order a promotional package

Regardless of whether it is pubs, cafés, festivals or other meeting places – we want to become more visible and reach everyone who values ​​independent journalism with an attitude. We have put together a campaign package with stickers, flyers, posters and buttons that you can use to get active and support your newspaper.
To the promotional package