The planet is dangerously close to this climate threshold. Here’s what 1.5°C really means
The alarm bells are loud and clear. Federal and international climate officials recently confirmed that 2023 was the planet’s hottest year on record — and that 2024 may be even hotter. With a global average temperature of 58.96 degrees, Earth in 2023 was within striking distance of a dangerous limit: 2.7 degrees of warming over the preindustrial period, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. … [E]ach additional degree — or even tenth of a degree — of warming will have impacts beyond those already occurring, including increased tree mortality, biodiversity loss, worsening wildfires, longer heat waves, extreme rainfall and heavy floods.
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