Expected CO2 levels in 2024 threaten 1.5C warming limit: Met Office

"It's looking vanishingly unlikely that we'll limit warming to 1.5," Richard Betts, the Met Office author of the CO2 forecast, told AFP. This year could be even hotter because the naturally-occuring El Nino climate pattern, which emerged mid-2023, usually increases global temperatures for one year after. El Nino also brings hotter and drier conditions across tropical forests and peatlands that reduces their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. UN experts have calculated that emissions need to be slashed nearly in half this decade to keep the 1.5C limit in play. He stressed that while these are not the only ways to keep the 1.5C limit in reach, all possible paths would involve "urgent emissions cuts".