Earth navigating uncharted territory. Exploring climate scientists’ predictions for 2024
Late in November, a specialised agency of the UN confirmed 2023 is assured to end up as Earth’s hottest year in human history. It is set to break a record established in 2016, underscoring the planet is closer than ever to the thresholds that leaders seek to avoid.
Limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is possibly the most important climate goal currently. Scientists say it is becoming increasingly out of reach but that achieving it is expected to bring the planet back to a favourable period, slowly but surely.
Understanding El Nino and La Nina climate patterns
Nonetheless, climate trends can be difficult to predict precisely. In the beginning of 2023, experts predicted the year is set to end as one of the planet’s warmest on record. But they didn’t expect it to set so many new precedents – and by record-wide margins.
El Nino is known to elevate planetary temperatures by as much as a few tenths of a degree Celsius. It is associated with warmer-than-average surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and those bodies eventually release heat and steam.
The phenomenon lasts a year or less, peaking during the cold season and then fading in the spring. The current El Nino began in June. It could match the El Nino that began in early 2015, peaked that December and faded by June 2016, showing 2016 threatening temperatures.
If that pattern repeats this time, that could mean the abnormal conditions that have persisted over the past six months exacerbate even further in the first half of 2024. Moreover, El Nino has Domino effects that lead to drought in other parts of the planet.
Human-caused climate change dominating global trends
The current El Nino is likely to fade by June, returning the Pacific to ‘neutral conditions’. Beyond that, it’s not clear if the neutral conditions shall persist or if La Nina – known for planetary cooling – shall develop. In fact, there is even a chance of El Nino returning.
Read More: Lightning is a big killer in Bangladesh. Climate change is making it worse
Human activity-induced climate change has been dominating global trends: the past eight years have been the eight hottest on record, and a sure-to-be-record-hot 2023 and a potentially even hotter 2024 could easily stretch the concerning streak to a decade.
