THE global temperatures have remained at levels Historically raised in Aprilpursuing a series of almost two years of unpublished heat On the planet which agitates the scientific environment on the speed of global warming. Globally, April 2025 ranks second warmer Behind April 2024, according to the European Observatory Copernicuswhich is based on billions of measures from satellites, weather stations and other tools.
Last month thus extends an uninterrupted series of Records or Quasi-Records of Temperatura which has been going on since July 2023, almost two years. Since then, with one exception, every month has been at least 1.5 ° C warm than the average of the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).
Many scientists, however, expected the period 2023-2024, the two hottest years ever measured in the world, followed by a respite, when the warmer conditions of the El Niño phenomenon would fade.
“With 2025, it should have been silent, but instead of that, we stay in this accelerated warming phase,” said Johan Rockström, director in Germany of the Potsdam Institute on the impact of the climate. “It seems that we are stuck there” and “what explains it is not entirely resolved, but it is a very worrying sign,” he said.
The last two years “have been exceptional,” comments Samantha Burgess, from the European center which operates Copernicus. “They remain in the range of what the climatic models predicted for today, but we are at the top of the fork.” One of the explanations is based on the fact that the Nina phenomenon, inverse of El Nino and synonymous with refreshing influence, is ultimately only “low intensity” since December, according to the world meteorological organization, and could already decline in the coming months.
Already almost 1.4 ° C
About fifty, deemed climatologists, led by the British Piers Forster, believe that the climate was already warmed on average of 1.36 ° C in 2024. It is the conclusion of a preliminary version of their study which updates each year the key figures of the IPCC, climate experts mandated by the UN. Copernicus has a very close current estimate of 1.39 ° C.
The 1.5 ° C warming threshold, the most ambitious in the Paris Agreement, is about to be reached in a stabilized manner, calculated over several decades, a number of scientists say. Copernicus thinks that this may be the case by 2029. “It is in four years. The reality is that we are going to exceed 1.5 ° C, ”says Samantha Burgess.
“At the current rate, the 1.5 ° C will be beaten before 2030,” said Julien Cattiaux, CNRS climatologist. “It is said that each tenth of degree counts”, because it multiplies The droughtsheat waves and other weather disasters “but currently, they parade quickly”, is alarmed the scientist.
But “now, what you have to try to do is have the closest global warming” of the initial target because “it is not the same if we aim for a warmed climate of 2 ° C at the end of the century or 4 ° C”, he recalls.
That the combustion of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – is responsible for the essentials of warming is not debated among climatologists.
But discussions and studies multiply to quantify the climatic influence of the evolution of clouds, a drop in air pollution or that of the earth’s capacities to store carbon in natural wells such as forests and oceans.
The annual global temperature surveys date back to 1850. But ice carrots, sediments at the bottom of the ocean and other “climatic archives” make it possible to establish that the current climate has been unprecedented for at least 120,000 years.
