The first of several global heating analyses for May is in, and while expected, the news, from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, is still disturbing:
It was the warmest May on record, continuing a record-setting heat streak that has now lasted for each of the past 12 months, going back to June 2023.
This means global temperatures have been at 1.63 degrees C above preindustrial levels over the past 12 months, according to the Copernicus analysis. Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to restrain the increase of global average surface temperature to 1.5 C.
This short-term warming doesn’t mean we’ve breached that threshold — which concerns a longer-term span of years, not months. Nonetheless, ”we are way off track to meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement,” says Ko Barrett, deputy-secretary of the World Meteorological Organization. “We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will ...
