The Earth notched up its warmest year on record last year — but even that new peak is in danger of being surpassed in 2024.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed a milestone Tuesday that scientists had long predicted: 2023’s average global temperature surpassed the previous peak set in 2016, and reached the highest mark since record-keeping began in 1880.

Even more ominously, those surging temperatures are quickly jeopardizing the most ambitious target that nations around the world agreed to in the Paris climate agreement more than eight years ago: :Limiting the Earth’s warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Based on last year’s peak, the world briefly flirted with warming 1.48 degrees.

Temperatures may push even higher this year — when nearly half the world’s population will elect leaders whose policies will influence whether nations can pull the climate from the brink. The 2023 data means each of the last 10 years comprise the 10 warmest ever recorded.

The new record shattered the previous high in 2016 by 0.17 degrees Celsius, Copernicus found. Last year’s hottest day, July 6, saw the average recorded temperature planetwide hit 62.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or just over 17 degrees Celsius.

Election results from 2023 have not been encouraging for advocates of aggressive climate action: The Netherlands and Argentina — countries that helped spark the global drive to fight climate change more than two decades ago — recently elected right-wing populists with known anti-climate zeal just before the most recent climate negotiations kicked off Nov. 30 in Dubai.

And with the White House up for grabs in November and former President Donald Trump showing strong support in several polls, the climate policies that the U.S. has pursued under President Joe Biden could be in danger. Trump has vowed to tear down Biden’s green policies, calling them a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.”

“It’s a scary time in that there are candidates on ballots across the world who haven’t really understood the........

© Politico